Checkpoint Charlie (6 page)

After lunch we'd set up a few things and then I'd staked myself in the Tamanaco lobby and four hours later I was still there.

Between five and six I saw each of the three again.

The first one spent the entire hour at the pool outside the glass doors at the rear of the lobby. He was a good swimmer with the build and grace of a field-and-track contender; he had a round Mediterranean face, more Italian than French in appearance. He had fair hair cut very short — crew cut — but the color and cut didn't mean anything; you could buy the former in bottles. For the convenience of my own classification I dubbed him The Blond.

The second one appeared shortly after five, crossing the lobby in a flared slim white tropical suit. The heels of his beige shoes clicked on the tiles like dice. He stopped at the side counter to make a phone call — he could have been telephoning or he could have been using it as an excuse to study my abundant profile — and then he went along to the bell captain's desk and I heard him ask the captain to summon him a taxi, as there weren't any at the curb in front. His voice was deep; he spoke Spanish with a slight accent that could have been French. He had a very full head of brown hair teased into an Afro and he had a strong actorish face like those of Italians who play Roman gigolos in Technicolor films. He went right outside again, presumably to wait for his taxi. I dubbed him The Afro. If he'd actually looked at me I hadn't detected it — he had the air of a man who only looked at pretty girls or mirrors.

The third one was a bit more thickly muscled and his baldness was striking. He had a squarish face and a high pink dome above it. Brynner and Savalas shave their heads; why not Gregorius? This one walked with an athlete's bounce — he came down about half past five in khaki Bermudas and a casual Hawaiian tourist shirt; he went into the bar and when I glanced in on my way past to the gents' he was drinking something tall and chatting up a buxom dark-haired woman whose bored pout was beginning to give way to loose fourth-drink smiles. From that angle and in that light the bald man looked very American but I didn't cross him off the list; I'd need more to go on.

I was characterizing each of them by hair style but it was useless for anything but shorthand identification. Gregorius, when last seen by witnesses, had been wearing his hair long and black, shoulder-length hippie style. None of these three had hair remotely like that but the sightings had been five weeks ago and he might have changed it ten times in the interval.

The Blond was on a poolside chaise toweling himself dry when I returned from the loo to the lobby. I saw him shake his head back with that gesture used more often by women than by men to get the hair back out of their eyes. He was watching a girl dive off the board; he was smiling.

I had both room keys in my pocket and didn't need to stop at the desk. It was time for the first countermove. I went up in the elevator and walked past the door of my own room and entered the connecting room with the key Cartlidge had obtained for me. It was a bit elaborate but Gregorius had been known to hook a detonator to a doorknob and it would have been easy enough for him to stop a chambermaid in the hall: “My friend, the very fat American, I've forgotten the number of his room.”

So I entered my room through the connecting door rather than from the hall. The precaution was sensible; I didn't really expect to find anything amiss but I didn't want to risk giving Myerson the satisfaction of hearing how they'd scraped sections of blubber off the ceiling.

Admittedly I am fat but nevertheless you could have knocked me over with a feather at that moment.

Because the bomb was wired to the doorknob.

I looked at it from across the room. I didn't go any closer; I returned to the adjoining room, got the Do Not Disturb placard and went out into the hall and hung the placard on the booby-trapped doorknob. One of the many differences between a professional like Gregorius and a professional like Charlie Dark is that Charlie Dark tends to worry about the possibility that an innocent hotel maid might open the door.

Then I made the call from the phone in the adjoining room. Within ninety seconds Cartlidge was there with his four-man bomb squad. They'd been posted in the basement beside the hotel's wine cellar.

The crew went to work in flak vests and armored masks. Next door I sat with Cartlidge and he looked gloomy. “When it doesn't explode he'll know we defused it.” But then he always looks gloomy.

I said, “He didn't expect this one to get me. It's a signal flag, that's all. He wants me to sweat first.”

“And are you? Sweating?”

“At this altitude? Heavens no.”

“I guess it's true. The shoptalk. You've got no nerves.”

“No nerves,” I agreed, “but plenty of nerve. Cheer up, you may get his fingerprints off the device.”

“Gregorius? No chance.”

Any of the three could have planted it. We could ask the Venezuelans to interrogate every employee in the hotel to find out who might have expressed an interest in my room but it probably would be fruitless and in any case Gregorius would know as soon as the interrogations started and it would only drive him to ground. No; at least now I knew he was in the hotel.

Scruples can be crippling. If our positions had been reversed — if I'd been Gregorius with one of three men after me — I'd simply kill all three of them. That's how Gregorius would solve the problem.

Sometimes honor is an awful burden. I feel such an anachronism.

The bomb squad lads carried the device out in a heavy armored canister. They wouldn't find clues, not the kind that would help. We already knew the culprit's identity.

Cartlidge said, “What next?”

“Here,” I said, and tapped the mound of my belly, “I know which one he is. But I don't know it here yet.” Finger to temple. “It needs to rise to the surface.”

“You
know
?”

“In the gut. The gut knows. I have a fact somewhere in there. It's there; I just don't know what it is.”

I ordered up two steak dinners from room service and when the tray-table arrived I had Cartlidge's men make sure there were no bombs under the domed metal covers. Then Cartlidge sat and watched with a kind of awed disgust while I ate everything. He rolled back his cuff and looked at his watch. “We've only got about fourteen hours.”

“I know.”

“If you spend the rest of the night in this room he can't get at you. I've got men in the hall and men outside watching the windows. You'll be safe.”

“I don't get paid to be safe.” I put away the cheesecake — both portions — and felt better.

Of course it might prove to be a bullet, a blade, a drop of poison, a garrote, a bludgeon — it could but it wouldn't. It would be a bomb. He'd challenged me and he'd play it through by his own perverse rules.

Cartlidge complained, “There's just too many places he could hide a satchel bomb. That's the genius of plastique — it's so damn portable.”

“And malleable. You can shape it to anything.” I looked under the bed, then tried it. Too soft: it sagged near collapse when I lay back. “I'm going to sleep on it.”

And so I did until shortly after midnight when someone knocked and I came awake with the reverberating memory of a muffled slam of sound. Cartlidge came into the room carrying a portable radio transceiver — a walkie-talkie. “Bomb went off in one of the elevators.”

“Anybody hurt?”

“No. It was empty. Probably it was a grenade — the boys are examining the damage. Here, I meant to give you this thing before. I know you're not much for gizmos and gadgets but it helps us all keep in touch with one another. Even cavemen had smoke signals, right?”

“All right.” I thought about the grenade in the elevator and then went back to bed.

In the morning I ordered up two breakfasts; while they were en route I abluted and clothed the physique that Myerson detests so vilely. One reason why I don't diet seriously is that I don't wish to cease offending him. For a few minutes then I toyed with Cartlidge's walkie-talkie. It even had my name on it, printed onto a plastic strip.

When Cartlidge arrived under the little dark cloud he always carries above him I was putting on my best tie and a jaunty face.

“What's got you so cheerful?”

“I lost Gregorius once. Today I'm setting it right.”

“You're sure? I hope you're right.”

I went down the hall. Cartlidge hurried to catch up; he tugged my sleeve as I reached for the elevator button. “Let's use the fire stairs, all right?” Then he pressed the walkie-talkie into my hand; I'd forgotten it. “He blew up one elevator last night.”

“With nobody in it,” I pointed out. “Doesn't it strike you as strange? Look, he only grenaded the elevator to stampede me in to using the stairs. I suggest you send your bomb squad lads to check out the stairs. Somewhere between here and the ground floor they'll doubtless find a plastique device wired to a pressure-plate under one of the treads, probably set to detonate under a weight of not less than two hundred and fifty pounds.”

He gaped at me, then ran back down the hall to phone. I waited for him to return and then we entered the elevator. His eyes had gone opaque. I pressed the lobby-floor button and we rode down; I could hear his breathing. The doors slid open and we stepped out into the lobby and Cartlidge wiped the sweat off his face. He gave me a wry inquiring look. “I take it you found your fact.”

“I think so.”

“Want to share it?”

“Not just yet. Not until I'm sure. Let's get to the conference building.”

We used the side exit. The car was waiting, engine running, driver armed.

I could have told Cartlidge which one was Gregorius but there was a remote chance I was wrong and I didn't like making a fool of myself.

Caracas is a curiously Scandinavian city — the downtown architecture is modern and sterile; even the hillside slums are colorful and appear clean. The wealth of 20th century oil has shaped the city and there isn't much about its superficial appearance, other than the Spanish-language neon signs, to suggest it's a Latin town. Traffic is clotted with big expensive cars and the boulevards are self-consciously elegant. Most of the establishments in the central shopping district are branches of American and European companies: banks, appliances, coutouriers, Cadillac showrooms. It doesn't look the sort of place where bombs could go off: Terrorism doesn't suit it. One pictures Gregorius and his kind in the shabby crumbling wretched rancid passageways of Cairo or Beirut. Caracas? No; too hygienic.

As we parked the car the walkie-talkies crackled with static. It was one of Cartlidge's lads — they'd found the armed device on the hotel's fire stairs. Any heavy man could have set it off. But by then I was no longer surprised by how indiscriminate Gregorius could be, his chilly indifference to the risk to innocents.

We had twenty minutes before the scheduled arrivals of the ministers. I said, “It'll be here somewhere. The bomb.”

“Why?”

“It's the only place he can be sure they'll turn up on schedule. Are the three suspects still under surveillance? Check them out.”

He hunched over the walkie-talkie while I turned the volume knob of mine down to get rid of the distracting noise and climbed out of the car and had my look around; I bounced the walkie-talkie in my palm absently while I considered the possibilities. The broad steps of the
palacio
where the conference of OPEC ministers would transpire were roped off and guarded by dark-faced cops in Sam Brownes. On the wide landing that separated the two massive flights of steps was a circular fountain that sprayed gaily; normally people sat on the tile ring that contained it but today the security people had cleared the place. There wasn't much of a crowd; it wasn't going to be the kind of spectacle that would draw any public interest. There was no television equipment; a few reporters clustered off to one side with microphones and tape recorders. Routine traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian. That was useful because it meant Gregorius wouldn't be able to get in close; there would be no crowd to screen him.

Still, it wasn't too helpful. All it meant was that he would use a remote-control device to trigger the bomb.

Cartlidge lowered the walkie-talkie from his face. “Did you hear?”

“No.” I had difficulty hearing him now as well: the fountain made white noise, the constant gnashing of water, and I moved closer to him while he scowled at my own walkie-talkie. His eyes accused me forlornly. “Would it kill you to use it? All three accounted for. One in his room, one at the hotel pool, one in the dining room having his breakfast.”

I looked up past the rooftops. I could see the upper floors of the Hotel Tamanaco — it sits on high ground on the outskirts — and beyond it the tiny swaying shape of a cable car ascending the lofty mountain. Cotton ball clouds over the peaks. Caracas is cupped in the palm of the mountains; its setting is fabulous. I said to Cartlidge, “He has a thing about stairs, doesn't he.”

“What?”

“The Hamburg Bahnhof — the bomb was on the platform stairway. The Cairo job, again stairs. This morning, the hotel fire stairs. That's the thing about stairways — they're funnels.” I pointed at the flight of stone steps that led up to the portals of the
palacio
. “The ministers have to climb them to get inside.”

“Stone stairs. How could he hide a bomb there? You can't get underneath them. Everything's in plain sight.”

I brooded upon it. He was right. But it had to be: suddenly I realized it had to be — because I was here and the Saudi's limousine was drawing up at the curb and it meant Gregorius could get both of us with one shot and then I saw the Venezuelan minister walk out of the building and start down the stairs to meet the limousine and it was even more perfect for Gregorius: all three with one explosion. It
had
to be: right here, right now.