Checkpoint Charlie

Then he smiled My flesh crawled.

“You’re the bait, Charlie. He’ll come out for you.”

“In other words it’s an open secret that I’ll be in Caracas and you’ve spread the word where you know he’ll hear it.” I brooded at him, hating him afresh. “Maybe you’ve neglected something.”

“Oh?”

“Gregorius is like me in one respect. He’s —”

“Young, fast, up-to-date and sexy. Yes indeed, Charlie, you could be twins.”

I cut across his chuckle. “He’s a professional and so am I. Business comes first. He’d love to nail me. All right. But first he’ll do the job he’s being paid for.”

“Not this time. We’ve leaked the news that you’re being sent down there to terminate him regardless of cost. He thinks you’re being set up to nail him after he exposes himself by blowing up a few oil ministers. He can’t risk that — you got closer to nailing him than anybody else ever has. He knows if you’re set on him again you won’t turn loose until you’ve done the job. And he knows if he sets off a bomb while you’re in earshot of it you’ll reach him. He needs more lead time than that if he means to get away.”

And he smiled again: “He’s got to put you out of the way before he goes after the ministers. Once the bombs go off he can’t hang around afterwards to take you on. He’s got to do it first.”

I said, “I’ve heard stronger reasoning. He’s confident of his skills. Suppose he just ignores me and goes ahead with the job as if I weren’t there?”

“He hates you too much. He couldn’t walk away, could he? Not after Beirut. Why, I believe he hates you even more than I do.”

*   *   *

TWO YEARS EARLIER we’d known Gregorius was in Beirut to blast the Lebanese coalition prime minister. I’d devised one of the cleverer stunts of my long career. In those days Gregorius worked in tandem with his brother, who was six years older and nearly as bright as Gregorius. Our plan was good and Gregorius walked into it but I’d had to make use of Syrian back-up perso

Gregorius left his brother behind in ribbons in the alley; still alive today but a vegetable. Naturally Gregorius made efforts afterward to find out who was responsible for the ambush. Within a few weeks he knew my name. And of course Gregorius — that’s his code name, not the one he was born with — was Corsican by birth and personal revenge is a religion with those people. I knew one day he’d have to come for me; I’d lost very little sleep over it — people have been trying to kill me for thirty-five years.

Just before Myerson sent me to the airport he said, “We want him alive, Charlie.”

“You’re joking.”

“Absolutely not. It’s imperative. The information in his head can keep the software boys busy for eight months. Alive — it’s an order from the fifth floor.”

“You’ve already blindfolded me and sent me into the cage with him and now you want to handcuff me too?”

“Why, Charlie, that’s the way you like it best, you old masochist.”

He knows me too well.

*   *   *

I’D WATCHED THEM check in at the hotel desk and I’d narrowed the possibilities to three; I’d seen which pigeonholes the room clerk had taken the keys from so I knew which rooms they were in. I didn’t need to look at the register because it wouldn’t help me to know what names or passports they were using.

It was like the Mexican Shell Game: three shells, one pea. Under which shell is the pea?

He had to strike at me today because Myerson’s computer said so. And it probably had to be the Tamanaco Hotel because I had studied everything in the Gregorius dossier and I knew he had a preference — so strong it was almost a compulsion — for the biggest and best old hotel in a city. Big because it was easy to be anonymous there; best because Gregorius had been born dirt-poor in Corsica and was rich now; old because he had good taste but also because old walls tend to be soundproof. The Tamanaco, in Caracas, was it.

I was making it easy for him, sitting in plain sight in the lobby.

Earlier in the day I’d toured the city with Cartlidge. He looks like his name: all gaunt sinews and knobby joints. We’d traced the route in from the airport through the long mountain tu

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. Bry

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.