Checkpoint Charlie

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 co

So I entered my room through the co

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 i

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 di

“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 ru

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 i