Checkpoint Charlie

“Sure,” I said. “I missed my calling. I should have been a dip.”

*   *   *

IN THE morning I went into Atherton’s office and reclaimed the passport from his desk. “Did you get a report on it yet?”

“It’s phony all right. But a good forgery.”

“Then he’ll insist on the best when he goes to buy a replacement.”

Atherton and I exchanged smiles.

*   *   *

SINCE HIS original passport was a phony Grofield couldn’t go to the Embassy for a replacement of the one I had stolen from his pocket. That was what we were counting on. He’d have to buy a replacement from an under-the-counter dealer. He wouldn’t settle for the kind of counterfeit that most ignorant fugitives would buy; Grofield knew the ropes. We were counting on that.

Atherton’s four operatives kept a tight tail on Grofield. He emerged that morning from the call-girl’s flat with rage on his face and went around Algiers by taxi from one shop to another. All together he visited five of them. We kept records of all five addresses. Four of them were on Atherton’s list of known dealers; the fifth was added to it.

“We hang back,” I said. “At the moment he’s just shopping. Looking for the best paper. Keep the reins loose but don’t lose him.” I wasn’t interested in how many dealers he visited; the one who concerned me was the one to whom Grofield would return.

*   *   *

HE GAVE US a scare that night: he disappeared. He must have used the back door of the girl’s building and slipped away into the shadows. When the girl emerged alone from the building in the morning one of Atherton’s men went in wearing the guise of a municipal electric-service repairman and the flat was unoccupied. We did quite a bit of cursing but Grofield returned to the flat in the afternoon, using a key the girl must have given him. He was fairly well drunk by his walk. We sent the electrical repairman back in. He knocked at length and there was no reply so he got through the lock again and found Grofield happily passed out; he went through Grofield’s clothes and found no passport and reported back to us.

Atherton said, “I don’t like it.”

I said, “It’s still ru

“Suppose you’re wrong, Charlie?”

“Then I’m wrong and we start over again with another Judas goat. In the meantime we’d better beef up the surveillance on him. Can you spare another two men for a day or two?”

“I can scrape up a couple.”

“Stake him out front and back, then. Let’s not lose him again.”

*   *   *

HE LED them a merry run that night; we thought we were onto something but it turned out to be a meeting with a Lebanese armaments smuggler in the back room of a country store about forty kilometres inland from Algiers. Our men watched with eight-power night glasses and had a glimpse of black steel, most of it crated: Kalashnikovs and, they guessed, Claymore mines. “That’s what he’s here for,” I told Atherton. “He’s making a buy. The stuff will go out by boat. Eight weeks from now it’ll turn up in Thailand or Indonesia.”

“We’ll keep tabs on it,” he agreed, “find out where it goes. But this isn’t getting us to the passports.” “You want to bet?”

*   *   *

ONE OF the paper dealers on Atherton’s list was the proprietor of a half dozen curio shops, one of which was situated in the rue Darlan. At eleven in the morning Grofield left his flat, walked two blocks, flagged a taxi from a hotel rank, rode it to the waterfront, walked through an alley, picked up another taxi at a cruise-shop pier, got out of the second taxi at the western end of the casbah wall, almost lost our operatives in a network of passages, and finally led them back to the rue Darlan — his second visit to the curio shop in three days.

“All right,” Atherton said. He was exulting. “Let’s give it a toss.”

“Not yet,” I told him. “Let’s make sure.”

Grofield went to the airport that evening and bought a seat on the nine o’clock flight to Geneva. When he checked in at passport control one of Atherton’s men had a look at his papers and reported back to us: “You were right. The contents are fake but the booklet is genuine. How did you know?”

Atherton said, “Do we toss the shop now?”

“No. They wouldn’t warehouse the blanks in the shop. If we raid the shop we won’t find the shipment. We’ll wait for them to lead us to the blanks.”

We picked another transient out of the file that night and I did my pickpocket number on him the next afternoon; the transient was no help — he bought a cheap forgery from a bartender in the Avenue Faisal. We had to track three crooks through Algiers before one of them went into the curio shop in the rue Darlan to order a replacement passport. After that it was simple procedurals. A clerk from the curio shop led us to a house on the mountainside in the high-rent district; when he came out of the house the clerk had a 6x9 manilla envelope with him. We took it away from him and found a mint passport blank inside. That evening six of us raided the big house. We found the cartons of blanks in a safe in the basement. We turned the owner of the house over to the Algerian authorities.

It was anticlimactic. We recovered the passports but didn’t touch Bertine, let alone Dortmunder. To this day both of them are buying and selling illicit good around the Mediterranean; we ourselves are among their steady customers. Such is the cynicism of the trade.

But I did have the satisfaction of beaming in Myerson’s sour face. Once again he’d given me a job he thought couldn’t be done; once again I’d showed him up. I think he lives for the day when I foul one up.

He actually offered me a cigar. He knows how much I hate them. Without even bothering to acknowledge the offer I turned to leave the office after handing in my report. Myerson said, “All right, since you’re obviously dying for me to ask. How’d you bring it off?”

“Genius. A tablespoon with every meal.” I smiled cherubically at him.

If Myerson thinks I’ll give him the satisfaction of telling him how I brought it off, he’s crazy. Let him try to figure it out for himself. Maybe he’ll get so worked up he’ll blow one of his fuses.

*   *   *

Charlie’s

Chase

“I’VE GOT A PAPER CHASE for you.” Myerson was unusually mellow. He neither bared his teeth nor puffed cigar smoke in my face. “I want you to look through the Hong Kong reports for the past ten weeks.”

“What for?”

“You tell me.”

*   *   *

WHEN I returned to his fourth-floor office he cocked his head to one side. “Well?”

“Some weeks ago someone began systematically to double our China agents.”

“So it would seem. I wanted to make certain of my readings of the reports — that’s why I didn’t give you any hint what to look for. But you saw it too.”

“It’s a visible pattern.”

“Yes. Well, you’d better get out there and put a stop to hadn’t you.” Then for the first time he smiled. Myerson’s smile would frighten a piranha. It meant only that he hoped I would end up in trouble to my hairline.

As I went to the door he said to my back, “You’ve got to go on a diet, Charlie. You hardly fit through doors any more — you haven’t got any sideways.” He was still smiling — a wicked glitter of polished teeth.

*   *   *

I CAUGHT the noon flight from Dulles. The next day, fuzzy with jet lag, I descended upon the China Station.