Authors: Eric Ambler
He stood aside, motioning me in. Neither of us made any move to shake hands. Chihani took my raincoat.
I could see more of him now. He was of an indeterminate but well-preserved middle age, a man who watched what he ate and drank, took plenty of exercise, went to a good dentist, had pedicures as well as manicures and used rather too much of a toilet water that smelt expensive. Also noted was the fact that his English, though slightly accented, told you no more than that English had not been the first language of his childhood. The voice was a light tenor.
‘Do you mind, Mr Halliday, that I dress informally for our meeting? Do you object?’
The tone was arch. What he meant was that if I was hoping to express my displeasure with him just by standing there staring I would be disappointed.
‘How you choose to dress,’ I said, ‘is the only thing so far about this meeting to which I
don’t
object. Does that answer your question?’
‘Ah yes.’ He nodded amiably as if my response had been both polite and helpful. ‘But please come in and be comfortable.’
As I entered I saw that beyond number 17 there was a connecting room that could be closed off with a pair of double doors. This other room had been fitted up as a gym of sorts with an exercise mat, a set of barbells, a stationary bicycle, a massage table and an adjustable couch covered with towelling beneath a big sun-lamp. Number 17 itself was furnished with an office desk, comfortable pull-up chairs, a telex machine and a drinks cabinet. The rug on the floor looked and felt expensive.
‘Sit down, Mr Halliday. Sit down, please.’
As he ushered me to a chair I noticed for the first time a curious mannerism he had, a way of moving with his hands
and forearms held in the air as if he were a surgeon who had just scrubbed up for an operation. When I was seated he peered down intently at my face. I wondered if he could be looking for signs of a communicable disease. A health and fitness worshipper who practised weight-lifting at his age might well have a phobia about germs brought into his safe house from the world outside. But no, he was just curious.
‘You look younger than I had expected, Mr Halliday. Television made you look older, and that was two years ago.’
‘Television made me
feel
older.’
‘Naturally. You gave so much of yourself to it. Do you realize that of those you interviewed on
First of the Week
no less than three have since been indicted on serious charges?’
‘No thanks to me.’
‘But how beautifully you cross-examined them! How clumsy and how crude you showed them to be! How splendidly you used the power of words against them! This Halliday, I said to myself, is a man of words.’
‘That, according to the critics, was why the show flopped.’
‘Critics!’ He brushed them away with the edge of a hand. ‘Have you never had the experience of reading totally contradictory reviews of a book or a play and finding it hard to believe that the same work is being discussed? Of course you have. You do yourself an injustice.’ He beckoned to Chihani who was still standing in the doorway. ‘You may come in, Simone. Make yourself useful. Be our hostess. Serve drinks.’ He sat down facing me, his robe opening to reveal muscular thighs with a deep scar running up towards the left groin. ‘I am informed, Mr Halliday, that your preferred drink is whisky. Which shall it be? Scotch or bourbon?’
‘I’ve already refused your thiopental. Why should I accept your whisky?’ I no longer troubled to contain my anger. ‘And let’s cut out the jokes, shall we?’
His hands made a little gesture of surrender. ‘You object to being complimented?’
‘When the compliments insult my intelligence, yes. So
let’s forget all this nonsense about a crappy television show and get to your name. What do you like to call yourself at the moment? What do
I
call you if we ever get as far as my having to call you anything? Which is it? Zander, Hecht, Brochet, Luccio or Pike? Or do you have one of those exotic Arab names with some cute handle to it that you like to use?’
He blinked and suddenly the eyes lost their good humour. That was the first time I saw the transformation take place and it was disconcerting. The simper on the lips remained exactly as it was but the meaning of it changed completely. From being an amiable grimace it became, with that blink, part of an unmistakable warning sign. An animal was ready to attack.
His verbal response, however, was no more than a reproach. ‘I am afraid, Mr Halliday, that you are displeased with us.’
‘That surprises you?’
‘It causes regret. Mistakes have clearly been made. But I would have expected a man of your experience to have had more understanding.’
‘Understanding of what? Judo?’
He sighed. ‘Simone, my dear, kindly give our guest some Scotch and water with plenty of ice. I will have the same.’ To me he said: ‘It seems that there has been a little crossing of wires. Permit me, please, to ask you a couple of questions. First, you received both my letter and the bomb itself quite safely, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you reported to the police and FBI without delay?’
‘I reported to the police and they brought in the FBI, but there was no delay. If you wanted to make an impression on me you certainly succeeded. I became intrigued. That much must be obvious. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.’
‘But first you checked out the Zander name. With whom?’
‘A friend in a news agency. I’m not telling you which one.’
‘If it was a news agency I know which one you would go to. Names don’t matter. You learn that I am rich and
infamous. You are given other information.’
‘Which I’m beginning to find was highly inaccurate. For instance, I don’t call this a luxury hotel suite.’
He waved that aside. ‘This is a safe house. Let us stay with you, Mr Halliday. Titillated and intrigued, you could not refuse to accept the financially rewarding Pacioli deal. Is that how it was?’
‘That’s
almost
how it was,’ I said.
‘Had you by then heard again from the police or the FBI?’
‘No.’
‘How about other persons? Who else were you in touch with?’
‘Naturally I talked to my agent.’
‘Mentioning me?’
‘Only as Dr Luccio. If I’d mentioned Karlis Zander I’d have had to tell her about the bomb. She’d have had a fit and killed the whole deal. So, all we discussed was the Pacioli agreement as a normal piece of business. What is all this? What do you want to know?’
‘The bomb, the letter and the postcard were delivered to you three weeks ago, nearly four weeks. If you have heard no more on the subject from the police, the FBI or other official sources, Mr Halliday, you must have been avoiding them.’
‘Why the surprise? Of course I’ve been avoiding them. I’d given them what I thought they should have – the package with the bomb in it plus a photocopy of your letter to me. That’s all. I promised to let them have the original letter, but I didn’t do so because it was stuck to the postcard. Nor did I tell them about your follow-up through Pacioli and McGuire. I’d promised to let them know if there was a follow-up, but decided not to bother. Instead, I told my agent that I’d call her again in a couple of weeks to see if the agreement was ready for me to sign. Then I took off for a little vacation.’
‘A vacation?’ He looked quite startled. ‘Where?’
‘Nowhere you’d know.’ But he was still staring at me disbelievingly so I went on. ‘A friend of mine has a house on Long Island. He’s away quite a bit. I called him in London.
I’ve borrowed the place before. We have an arrangement. It’s very simple. My agent didn’t get the Pacioli agreement for signature from McGuire’s office until three days ago. As soon as I knew she had it I went straight into New York, signed, bought some travellers’ cheques and Italian money from the bank and took off. There’s been no time wasted.’
‘But you hid yourself. You also concealed the Hotel Mansour postcard from the FBI. Why did you do that?’
‘Two reasons. Where officialdom is concerned I’ve learned to keep my distance. That’s one reason. The main reason, though, is this, Mr Zander. I regarded that picture postcard as something in the nature of a private message from you to me. Was I wrong?’
‘No. Certainly not. You were right. It was very much a private message.’
‘A message saying that there was more in this proposition for me than a fifty-thousand-dollar fee? More than just money? Right?’
The eyes became wary. ‘You are under contract to help me write a book, Mr Halliday. If there are fringe benefits to the assignment you will undoubtedly discover them.’
I considered him for a moment. He was stalling suddenly and I couldn’t see why he should. If he didn’t want to level with me for some reason, why didn’t he put me off with a lie? Fatigue swept over me and my temper began to go again. ‘Mr Pike,’ I said, ‘the fact that I’ve reported for duty shouldn’t be misinterpreted. I mean don’t, for instance, run away with the idea that the enriching experience of being kidnapped by Miss Chihani and her team of juvenile psychopaths is going to persuade me to vary the terms of our agreement.’
‘Simone’s action was a mistake. It had my approval, however, and I apologize.’
It was said coldly and without conviction. My reply was equally cool. ‘That makes me feel a whole lot better. But while we’re still on the subject of our agreement perhaps I’d better remind you that there’s nothing at all in it about my having to take orders from anyone. So, in future, when Miss
Chihani feels like issuing orders about security, or anything else, I’m going to want more than her mere say-so to convince me that they should be obeyed. I’ll want to know
why
they should be obeyed.’
Chihani gave a harsh little laugh. ‘And I can tell you the answer you’ll get now,’ she said. ‘For your own safety and for ours. That’s what you will be told, Mr Halliday. Here’ – she shoved a tray with a drink on it in front of my nose – ‘calm yourself with whisky.’
‘That’s enough, Simone,’ said my host firmly. He waited until I had the drink in my hand, then took his own and waved her away with it. ‘Go and make some sandwiches.’
She put the tray down and went instantly. The distance around the desk to the door was long enough for me to notice that she had the heel-and-toe walk of a dancer or an athlete.
As the door closed behind her my host raised his glass as if to say that we were now free to drink. The eyes were smiling again. ‘What is your impression of her?’ he asked. ‘I mean leaving aside for the moment your present hostility and dislike.’
‘My first impression at the hotel was that she looked like an actor in drag. That is to say …’
‘I am familiar with the expression.’ He sipped his whisky. ‘What I am interested to know is how you evaluate her operational efficiency?’
‘As leader of a team of muggers operating in a hotel where the help isn’t going to lift a finger against them, I guess she’s okay. She seems familiar with the technical problems of giving injections to patients who won’t believe that doctor knows best. If she’s had nursing experience, though, it would be in the kind of hospital I hope to avoid. A bit paranoid herself, I thought. She spoke darkly of mysterious enemies threatening your lives, Mr Pike. What was all that about?’
‘You astonish me.’ He sipped his drink. ‘Crossed wires there may have been. I’ve admitted it. But surely you cannot have so soon forgotten the briefing given you by Mr McGuire
in New York. Surely you realize that any book exposing the inner workings of the terrorist international is a great threat to these criminal conspirators. They will do anything to prevent its being written. And how better to do so than by killing its authors?’
‘One of its supposed authors is already dead. How do they know that it’s being written? I’m sure you wouldn’t tell them.’
The eyes snapped at me. ‘By “supposed author” you mean Nechayev?’
‘Of course, Mr Pike.’
‘There is nothing “supposed” about the Nechayev memoir. The fact of its existence is widely known and its significance well understood. Full and final authentication is due at any moment. Didn’t Pacioli tell you this? I have the English translation here for you to read. Meanwhile, please do not address me as Mr Pike. It is not my name.’
‘When I asked you what I should call you, you were offended.’
‘Because your manner was offensive.’
‘Very politely then. How do I address you?’
‘You could address me as Doctor, or as Zander.’
‘Okay, Doctor, Zander it is. But you have to understand my problems too. For instance, in your letter to me on the Baghdad postcard you sign yourself Karlis Zander.’
‘That was for your benefit, Mr Halliday. So that you could check on me a little, follow leads.’
‘I understand that. For instance, Zander Pharmaceuticals was registered in Miami and that’s where the package bomb was mailed. Interesting. But which of your names is going on the book? Doesn’t it
have
to be Luccio?’
‘Oh no.’
‘Then what happens to the story McGuire gave me on the memoir, I mean the one about Luccio inheriting it because he was Nechayev’s great-grandson? Was that also dreamed up for my benefit? Do we just forget about it?’
‘Oh most certainly no.’ The eyes were narrowed now,
almost turning the simper into a leer. ‘That part of your briefing by Mr McGuire should be considered as true.’
‘What do you mean by “considered as true”? That it
is
true or that you want us to
pretend
, just for the hell of it and because it might make me feel better, that it’s true?’
‘For the purposes of this discussion, let us say simply that the memoir came to a descendant of Nechayev and that I have bought the manuscript from him.’
‘And the right to publish it? Did you buy that too?’
‘Yes, yes certainly.’
‘Then you
could
be writing your commentary as the discoverer and legal owner of these long-lost and historically important papers. Well, that’s something. Let’s try building on it. You’re hiring me to edit the book. How about putting your real name on it? No, Mr Zander, hear me out. According to McGuire you hope to influence government policies with this book. You’re not just aiming for the bestseller lists. You want to be taken seriously. Right? I have to tell you that hiding behind a pseudonym with this sort of subject kills any chance of achieving the kind of success you want. If you’re hoping even to be
heard
on the subject of organized international terrorism, much less listened to and believed, you are going to have to tell all and name names.’