Why Me?

The part that galled the most was where Mologna thanked the FBI for its assistance in "rounding up" the jeweler Skoukakis and the arrested Cypriots, implying very clearly that it was the New York Police Department which had done the lion's share of the said rounding up. "They weren't even in the case!" Zachary cried. "They've never been in the case! Ru

They watched the tape to the end, then watched it through a second time, and in the ensuing silence Freedly said, thoughtfully, "Has he blown security, Mac? Do we have a complaint over his head, to the Commissioner?"

Zachary thought about that for a second or two, then reluctantly shook his head. "There was no lid clamped," he said. "We naturally assumed we were all gentlemen, that's all; we'd agree on a joint a

In the elevator Freedly, still casting about for revenge, said, "Well, has he hampered our investigation?"

"Of course he has! The son of a bitch."

"Well, then."

The elevator door opened and they headed down the corridor. Harry Cabot said, "If I were Chief Inspector Mologna—" (he pronounced it right) " — and I were charged with hampering your investigation, I would point out that you people are concentrating on foreign nationalist groups. By publicly stating that the investigation is aimed at domestic thieves, I have lulled your actual suspects and therefore aided your investigation."

"Shit," said Zachary.

"Ditto," said Freedly.

Back in the office, Zachary sat at his desk while Freedly and Cabot shared the sofa. Zachary said, "When we turn up the ring, Bob, when we rub Mo-log-na's nose in it that it wasn't one of his hole-in-corner little burglars, we'll have our own little press conference."

Freedly made no response. He merely sat there, a very dubious look on his face. Zachary said, "Bob?"

"Yes, Mac?"

"You don't think it was just a burglar, do you?"

"Mac," Freedly said, with obvious reluctance, "I'm not sure."

"Oh, Bob!" Zachary said, in a tone of utter betrayal.

"It wasn't the Greeks," Freedly said. "According to Harry here, it's looking more and more like it wasn't the dissident Turks. It's pretty surely not the Armenians."

"There's still the Bulgarians," Zachary said.

"Ye-ess."

"And our friends of the KGB. And the Serbo-Croats. And it still could be the Turks. Couldn't it, Harry?"

Cabot nodded, more in amusement than agreement. "The Turks are still a possibility," he said. "Remote, but possible."

"Hell, Bob," Zachary said, "there's groups out there we haven't even thought about yet. What about the Kurds?"

Freedly looked astonished. "The Kurds? What've they got to do with the Byzantine Fire?"

"They've been in opposition to Turkey a long time."

Cabot cleared his throat. "For the last thirty years," he gently pointed out, "the Kurds' main revolt has been against Iran."

"Well, how about Iran?" Zachary looked around like a hungry bird. "Iran," he repeated. "They poke their nose into just about everything in that Black Sea area. Particularly with the Shah out and the religious nuts in."

Freedly said, "Mac, there hasn't been the slightest rumble from Iran. If there was, Harry would know about it."

"That's true," Cabot said.

"Irani insurgents, then."

Agreeably, Cabot said, "Another possibility, of course, though rather remote." Seeing that Zachary was about to ring in yet another nation or band of dissidents, Cabot raised a restraining hand and said, "Still, the point has been adequately made. We are nowhere near the end of potential foreign suspects. When this unfortunate news in re Inspector Mologna arrived, however, I was just finishing my discussion of the more likely of these groups, and I'd intended to segue to another and perhaps equally important topic."

Zachary restrained himself with the greatest difficulty. He bubbled with undeclared Kazaks, Circassians, Uzbeks, Albanians, Lebanese, and Cypriot Maronites, all of whom made him mutely fidget and squirm at his desk, picking up pencils and paperweights, then putting them down again.

Having bludgeoned the previous conversation to death with practiced civility, Cabot said, "Whichever of our Free World allies turns out to be responsible for this theft, if any, the fact is that just about every group we've mentioned, and some we haven't discussed as yet, has become active since the theft. So far, we know of the entrance into this country in the last twenty-four hours of a Turkish Secret Police assassination team, a Greek Army counterinsurgency guerrilla squad, members of two separate Cypriot Greek nationalist movements (who may spend all their time here gu

"The British!" Surprise unsealed Zachary's lips. "What've they got to do with it?"

"The British take a proprietary interest in the entire planet," Cabot told him. "They think of themselves as our landlords, and they have called for a United Nations fact-finding team to assist the rest of us in our investigations. They have also volunteered to lead this fact-finding team themselves."

"Good of them," Zachary said.

"But the main problem right now," Cabot said, "aside from the loss of the ring itself, of course, is all these foreign gunmen ru

"New York would be displeased, too," Freedly said.

"No doubt," agreed Cabot.

Acidly, Zachary said, "Mo-log-na could give another press conference."

Unexpectedly, Cabot chuckled. The other two, seeing nothing amusing anywhere in the visible landscape, looked at him with a

"I wish Mo-log-na was him," Zachary said.