Роберт Фиш - The Gold of Troy

In the basement of the apartment Kovpak stood and watched as Ulanov and another man listened patiently to their headsets. Suddenly Ulanov looked up. He winked at Gregor. “He’s dialing...” He closed his eyes as if to listen better and then opened them to scribble some numbers on a pad. He showed them to the large blond man who read them and nodded. Ulanov put his attention back to his headset and then looked up, frowning. “He hung up without waiting for his call to be answered.”

“Maybe he decided to go to the man instead of calling him,” Kovpak said. “I’d better get out to my car.” A thought came; he smiled sheepishly. “I don’t even know what he’s driving.”

“Fortunately, we thought it might be well to know,” Ulanov said dryly. “He’s driving a yellow Volvo, at least ten years old. It’s parked a block down the street, pointing north. You can’t miss it. The door on the driver’s side, the street side, is caved in and the whole thing looks as if it’s being held together with spit.” He held up his hand before Kovpak could sprint for the steps. “But there’s no need to rush. I have a man outside who’ll advise us when your professor leaves the apartment. And the professor’ll have a little trouble starting his car.” He grinned. “Not too much, just enough to hold him up until we can pick him up. A loose electrical connection even he can’t miss if he has enough brains to take a look at the motor.” He returned to listening to the telephone. “Maybe he had to go to the bathroom...”

The minutes passed with Ulanov wishing he could smoke but knowing that the odor could testify to the presence of men in the basement, and with Kovpak getting more and more restless. Suddenly Kovpak looked up with a frown. “Major, did you get the number he dialed?”

“Of course.” Ulanov pointed to the pad.

“How long would it take to find an address for that number? Or a name?”

Ulanov looked inquiringly at the large blond man with him. The man considered the question a moment and then shrugged. “Maybe half an hour.” He put aside his headset without being told, reading his orders from Ulanov’s nod, and left the basement.

The two men remaining there continued their vigil. Kovpak found a couple of empty crates and dragged them over; Ulanov nodded his thanks and sat down. Kovpak slipped on the headset abandoned by the blond man. The silence continued. After fifteen more minutes Ulanov looked over at Kovpak.

“You couldn’t have put much of a scare into the man,” he said mildly. “Maybe I’d better go up and finish the job.”

“I put enough of a scare into him,” Kovpak said with a touch of irritation. “I have no idea why he isn’t calling someone! Or isn’t rushing to that someone right now! I don’t like this...”

“Well, we’ll have an address and a name in a few more minutes,” Ulanov said commiseratingly.

“If you got the number right.”

“If you had done your simple job as well as I do my more complicated ones,” Ulanov said evenly, “we wouldn’t be sitting here like a couple of dolts waiting for a telephone call it seems he isn’t going to make.”

“Maybe he left by the back way...”

“Maybe he went up in a balloon from the roof,” Ulanov said in an unkind tone. “Or is tunneling from the third floor to the third floor of a building in the next street. Do you think you’re the only person who ever heard of a back door to an apartment building? Or of having it watched?”

Gregor bit back a retort. Arguing with Ulanov wasn’t going to help. And while he had been positive that Professor Nordberg had been frightened half out of his skin, the fact was that Nordberg was neither leaving nor telephoning. He was probably having a belated breakfast and laughing to himself at the puerile attempts to frighten him. Or possibly he was entertaining a woman visitor who had arrived in the past half hour. The way he looked at Ruth when she was coming up the stairs indicated he was a man who might even put a willing woman ahead of the treasure — although that seemed most unlikely. Kovpak checked his watch and muttered a curse under his breath. Where the devil was that blond genius of an assistant of Ulanov who could trace a telephone number to a name in half an hour? More than that had already passed. He probably could have done as well by simply running his finger down the list of all telephone subscribers in the country in that length of time. He checked his watch once again and made a decision. He put his headset aside, coming to his feet.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he said quietly. “I’m going upstairs and ask our sleazy friend just why he isn’t doing what he should be doing.” His voice toughened. “He’ll tell me, too, or else—”

Ulanov shrugged. “Or else he won’t. You’re talking about a lot of money, my friend. It induces silence more than physical threats.” The stocky major watched his companion climb the basement steps and disappear through the door leading to the lobby. Gregor Kovpak, he decided with a sigh, did not have the proper temperament to be a successful intelligence agent. He lacked the patience for it. Although one would think that an archaeologist, working years and years on some excavation just to emerge triumphant with a few shards of pottery, or a few dessicated bones, would have the patience of Job. But it was a different type of patience, Ulanov decided, and recalled when he was a young agent and was assigned to continuously stare from a window at a blank wall, simply waiting for a certain person to place a poster on it. Nobody ever did, and all he got from Vashugin when he reported had been a grunt. Still, possibly a grunt was all that particular vigil had been worth.

The minutes passed with Ulanov missing tobacco; the silence at the other end of the tapped line was beginning to make him sleepy. Then his head jerked up, alert. There had been a sound at the head of the basement steps and Ulanov assumed the attitude of a faithful member of the Danish Telephone Service, only to look and see Kovpak returning. The major looked at him inquiringly. “Well?”

“He didn’t answer the door.”

Major Kovpak looked at him curiously. “It took you that long to discover he didn’t answer the door?”

“I went up and rapped on the door; nobody answered. I thought he might be in an inner room where he couldn’t hear me knock, so I went down to the street and rang his doorbell. He never answered. So then I went back upstairs and rapped on the door again—”

“And nobody answered. I heard you.” The major considered his younger friend carefully. “Or else he didn’t tell you what you wanted to know despite your ‘or else’...”

Kovpak’s face flushed. “I said he didn’t answer the door!”

“If you say so, I believe you. Maybe he thought you were selling magazine subscriptions...”

There was a shadow on the steps and the blond man appeared, panting a bit and looking apologetic for the delay.

“It took longer than I thought,” he said, “but here it is. The call was made to a place called Lindgren Castle. A Count Axel Lindgren lives there. It’s in Ringsted. Of course, the call may have been to someone else in the household,” he added, “but that is the address the call was placed to.”

“ Lindgren !” Gregor stared but only for a moment, then his jaw hardened. “That accident was no accident! That murdering bastard!” He stared at Ulanov, not seeing him, speaking aloud but to himself. “It makes sense when you think about it. He’s important enough to have the necessary contacts throughout the world. He had the money needed to finance the operation, and he has the charm” — he smiled grimly at the use of the word — “the charm! to get a little nobody like Nordberg to hand the treasure over to him. I’m surprised Nordberg stayed alive as long as he did...”