Checkpoint Charlie

“This is pointless. Who can possibly benefit from this ridiculous performance?”

“I think they’ll find that acceptable,” Ross said. “Now then, about the target. He must be taken out within the next twelve days because that’s the deadline for a particular international maneuver the details of which needn’t concern you. The target is here in Dar-es-Salaam, so you’ll have plenty of time to set up the assassination. Do you recognize the name Chiang Hsien?”

She laughed then. She actually laughed. “Incredible.”

Ross managed to smile. “Yes. The chief of the Chinese station in Dar. Now there’s just one more detail.”

“Is that all? Thank goodness for that.”

Ross nodded pleasantly. “Yes, that’s right. You’ve got to make it look as if it’s the work of Americans. I’d suggest you use an American rifle. I leave the other details in your hands, but the circumstantial evidence must point to an American plot against the Chinese people’s representative. You understand?”

“Is that all, then?”

“If you still want confirmation I’ll arrange for a telephone contact between you and my principals. I think that covers everything, then. It’s always pleasant doing business with a professional.” With a courtly bow — he might have been Doug Fairbanks himself — Ross turned briskly on his heel and marched away toward the trees without looking back.

I watched the woman walk back to her open boat. The junks had disappeared past the point of land to the south; the outriggers were still tethered in the water by the village; the coastal steamer was plowing north, the Zanzibar ferry’s smoke had disappeared — and the two white-hatted men in the stern of the sport fishing boat were packing up their rods and getting out of their swivel chairs. The dragon lady pushed her boat into the surf, climbed over the gunwale, made her way aft and hooked the outboard engine over the transom. She yanked the cord a few times. It sputtered and roared; and she went chugging out in a wide circle toward the open water, angling to starboard to clear the headland.

When she’d gone a couple of hundred yards Ross came through the trees beside me and said, “What happens now?”

“Watch.” I smiled at him. “You did a beautiful job, you know.”

“Yeah, I know I did.”

I liked him for that. I hate false modesty.

The sport fisherman was moving, its engines whining, planing the water: collision course. Near the headland it intercepted the little open outboard boat. The woman tried to turn away but the big white boat leaped ahead of her and skidded athwart her course.

“That skipper knows how to handle her,” Ross commented without pleasure.

With no choice left, the woman allowed her boat to be drawn alongside by a long-armed man with a boathook. One of the men in the stern — one of the two with white hats — gave her a hand aboard. She didn’t put up a struggle; she was a pro. I saw them push her toward the cabin — they went below, out of sight, and then the two boats disappeared around the headland, one towing the other.

Ross and I walked back to the car; I tossed the rifle into the back seat — we’d drop it off at Arbuckle’s. It wasn’t loaded. If she’d called our bluff I’d have let her run for it. (There’s always another day.)

I said, “They’ll milk her of course, but they won’t believe a word of it. They’ve got the evidence on tape and they won’t buy her denials. They wouldn’t believe the truth in a thousand years and it’s all she’s got to offer.”

Ross leaned against the car, both arms against the roof, head down between his arms. “You know what they’ll do to her, don’t you. After they squeeze her dry.”

I said, “It’ll happen a long way from here and nobody will ever know about it.”

“And that makes it right?”

“No. It adds another load to whatever we’ve already got on our consciences. If it makes you feel a little better it’s a form of justice — think of the people she’s murdered. She may survive this, you know. She may come out of it alive. But if she does she’ll never get another job in that line of work. Nobody’ll trust her again.”

“It hasn’t solved a thing,” he complained. He gave me a petulant little boy look. “They’ll just send somebody to take her place, won’t they? Next week or next month.”

“Maybe they will. If they do we’ll have to deal with it when it happens. You may as well get used to it, Ross — you play one game, you finish it, you add up the score and then you put the pieces back onto the board and start the next game. That’s all there is to it — and that’s the fun of it. As long as you stay lucky there’s always another game.”

Ross stared at me. “I guess there is,” he said reluctantly.

We got in the car and Ross turned the key. I smiled briefly, trying to reassure him. The starter meshed and he put it in gear. He said with sudden savagery, “But it’s not all that much fun for the losers, is it.”

“That’s why you should always play to win,” I replied.

Ross fishtailed the car angrily out into the road.

*   *   *

Charlie’s

Shell Game

BY THE END OF THE AFTERNOON I had seen three of them check in at the reception desk and I knew one of them had come to kill me but I didn’t know which one.

Small crowds had arrived in the course of the afternoon and I’d had plenty of time to study them while they stood in queues to check in at the reception desk. One lot of sixteen sixteen had come in together from an airport bus — middle-aged couples, a few children, two or three solitary businessmen; tourists, most of them, and sitting in the lobby with a magazine for a prop I wrote them off. My man would be young — late twenties, I knew that much.

I knew his name too but he wouldn’t be traveling under it.

Actually the dossier was quite thick; we knew a good deal about him, including the probability that he would come to Caracas to kill me. We knew something of his habits and patterns; we’d seen the corpses that marked his backtrail; we knew his name, age, nationality; we had several physical descriptions — they varied but there was agreement on certain points: medium height, muscularly trim, youthful. We knew he spoke at least four languages. But he hadn’t been photographed and we had no finger-prints; he was too clever for that.

Of the check-ins I’d espied at the Tamanaco desk three were possibles — any of them could be my intended assassin.

My job was to take him before he could take me.

*   *   *

MYERSON HAD SUMMONED ME BACK from Helsinki and I had arrived in Langley at midnight grumpy and rumpled after the long flight but the cypher had indicated red priority so I’d delivered myself directly to the office without pause to bathe or sleep, let alone eat. I was famished. Myerson had taken a look at my stubble and plunged right in: “You’re flying to Caracas in the morning. The eight o’clock plane.”

“You may have to carry me on board.”

“Me and how many weightlifters?” He glanced at the clock above the official photograph of the President. “You’ve got eight hours. The briefings won’t take that long. Anyhow you can sleep on the plane.”

“Maybe. I never have,” I said, “but then I’ve never been this exhausted. Have you got anything to eat around here?”

“No. This should perk you up, though — it’s Gregorius.”

“Is it now.”

“I knew you’d wag your tail.”

“All right, you have my attention.” Then I had to fight the urge to look straight up over my head in alarm: Myerson’s smile always provokes the premonition that a Mosler safe is falling toward one’s head.

“You’ve gained it back. Gone off the diet?” Now that he had me hooked in his claws he was happy to postpone the final pounce: like a cat with a chipmunk. I really hate him.

I said, “Crawfish.”

“What?”