Honour Among Thieves (9 page)

She
parked the Ford Taurus – America’s most popular car – a hundred yards from the
house, but not before she’d swung it round to face the direction in which she
would be leaving.

She
changed her shoes in the car. The only time she had nearly been caught was when
some mud had stuck to the soles of her shoes and the FBI had traced it to
within yards of a spot she had visited a few days before.

She
swung her bag over her shoulder and stepped out onto the road. She began to
walk slowly towards the house.

They
had chosen the location well. The farmhouse was several miles from the nearest
building – and that was an empty barn – at the end of a track that even
desperate lovers would have thought twice about.

There
was no sign of anyone being in the house, but she knew they were there,
waiting, watching her every move. She opened the door without knocking and
immediately saw one of them in the hall.

‘Upstairs,’
he said, pointing. She did not reply as she walked past him and began to climb
the stairs.

She
went straight into the bedroom and found the young girl sitting on the end of
the bed reading. Sally turned and smiled at the slim woman in the green Laura
Ashley dress, hoping that she had brought another book with her.

The
woman placed a hand in her bag and smiled shyly, before pulling out a paperback
and passing it over to the young girl.

‘Thank
you,’ said Sally, who took the book, checked the cover and then quickly turned
it over to study the plot summary.

While
Sally became engrossed by the promised story, the woman unclipped the long
plaited rope that was attached to the two sides of her shopping bag.

Sally
opened the book at the first chapter, having already decided she would have to
read every page very slowly. After all, she couldn’t be sure when the next
offering might come.

The
movement was so fast that she didn’t even feel the rope go round her neck.
Sally’s head jerked back and with one flick her vertebra was broken. Her chin
slumped onto her chest.

Blood
began to trickle out of her mouth, down her chin and onto the cover of A Time
to Love and a Time to...

The
driver of the limousine was surprised to be flagged down by a traffic cop just
as he was about to take the exit ramp onto the freeway. He felt sure he hadn’t
broken the speed limit. Then he spotted the ambulance in his rear-view mirror,
and wondered if they simply wanted to pass him. He looked to the front again to
see the motorcycle cop was firmly waving him onto the hard shoulder.

He
immediately obeyed the order and brought the car to a standstill, puzzled as to
what was going on. The ambulance drew in and stopped behind him. The cop
dismounted from his motorcycle, walked up to the driver’s door and tapped on
the window. The chauffeur touched a button in the armrest and the window slid
silently down.

‘Is
there a problem, officer?’

‘Yes,
sir, we have an emergency on our hands,’ the policeman said without raising his
visor. ‘Your patient has to return to the Ohio State University Hospital
immediately. There have been unforeseen complications. You’re to transfer him
to the ambulance and I will escort them back into the city.’

The
wide-eyed driver agreed with a series of consenting nods. ‘Should I go back to
the hospital as well?’ he asked.

‘No,
sir, you’re to continue to Cincinnati and report to your office.’

The
driver turned his head to see two paramedics dressed in white overalls standing
by the side of the car. The policeman nodded and one of them opened the back
door while the other released the seatbelt so that he could help the patient
out.

The
driver glanced in the rear-view mirror and watched the paramedics guide the
well-built man towards the ambulance. The siren on the motorcycle brought his
attention back to the policeman who was now directing the ambulance up the exit
ramp so that it could cross the bridge over the highway and begin its journey
back into the city.

The
whole changeover had taken less than five minutes, leaving the driver in the
limousine feeling somewhat dazed. He then did what he felt he should have done
the moment he saw the policeman, and telephoned his headquarters in Cincinnati.

‘We
were just about to call you,’ said the girl on the switchboard. ‘They don’t
need the car any longer, so you may as well come straight back.’

‘Suits
me,’ said the driver. ‘I just hope the client pays the bill.’

‘They
paid cash in advance last Thursday,’ she replied. The driver clicked the phone
back on its cradle and began his journey to Cincinnati. But something was
nagging in the back of his mind. Why had the policeman stood so close to the
door that he couldn’t get out, and why hadn’t he raised his visor? He dismissed
such thoughts. As long as the company had been paid, it wasn’t his problem.

He
drove up onto the freeway, and didn’t see the ambulance ignore the signpost to
the city centre and join the stream of traffic going in the opposite direction.
The man behind the wheel was also contacting his headquarters.

‘It
went as planned, boss,’ was all he replied to the first question.

‘Good,’
said Cavalli. ‘And the chauffeur?’

‘On
his way back to Cincinnati, none the wiser.’

‘Good,’
Cavalli repeated. ‘And the patient?’

‘Fine,
as far as I can tell,’ said the driver, glancing in the rear-view mirror.

‘And
the police escort?’

‘Mario
took a detour down a side road so he could get changed into his Federal Express
uniform. He should catch up with us within the hour.’

‘How
long before the next switch?’

The
driver checked the milometer. ‘Must be about another ninety miles, just after
we cross the state line.’

‘And
then?’

‘Four
more changes between there and the Big Apple. Fresh drivers and a different car
each time. The patient should be with you around midnight tomorrow, though he
may have to stop off at a rest room or two along the way.’

‘No
rest rooms,’ said Cavalli. ‘Just take him off the highway and hide him behind a
tree.’

D
OLLAR BILL’S
NEW HOME turned out to be the basement of a house in Georgetown, formerly an
artist’s studio. The room where he worked was well lit without glare and, at
his request, the temperature was kept at sixty-six degrees with a constant
humidity.

Bill
attempted several ‘dry runs’ as he called them, but he couldn’t get started on
the final document until he had all the materials he needed. ‘Nothing but
perfection will do,’ he kept reminding Angelo. He would not have his name
associated with anything that might later be denounced as a forgery. After all,
he had his reputation to consider.

For
days they searched in vain for the right pen nibs. Dollar Bill rejected them
all until he was shown a picture of some in a small museum in Virginia. He
nodded his approval and they were in his hands the following afternoon.

The
curator of the museum told a reporter from the Richmond Times Dispatch that she
was puzzled by the theft. The pens were not of any historic importance or
particularly valuable. There were far more irreplaceable objects in the next
display case.

‘Depends
who needs them,’ said Dollar Bill when he was shown the press cutting.

The
ink was a little easier once Bill had found the right shade of black. When it
was on the paper he knew exactly how to control the viscosity by temperature
and evaporation to give the impression of old age. Several pots were tested
until he had more than enough to carry out the job.

While
others were searching for the materials he needed, Dollar Bill read several
books from the Library of Congress and spent a few minutes every day in the
National Archives until he discovered the one mistake he could afford to make.

But
the toughest requirement proved to be the parchment itself, because Dollar Bill
wouldn’t consider anything that was less than two hundred years old. He tried
to explain to Angelo about carbon dating.

Samples
were flown in from Paris, Amsterdam, Vienna, Montreal and Athens, but the forger
rejected them all. It was only when a package arrived from Bremen with a
selection dated 1781 that Dollar Bill gave a smile which only Guinness normally
brought to his lips.

He
touched, caressed and fondled the parchment as a young man might a new lover
but, unlike a lover, he pressed, rolled and flattened the object of his
attentions until he was confident it was ready to receive the baptism of ink.
He then prepared ten sheets of exactly the same size, knowing that only one
would eventually be used.

Bill
studied the ten parchments for several hours. Two were dismissed within a
moment, and four more by the end of the day. Using one of the four remaining
sheets, the craftsman worked on a rough copy that Angelo, when he first saw it,
considered perfect.

‘Perfect
to the amateur eye, possibly,’ Bill said, ‘but a professional would spot the
seventeen mistakes I’ve made within moments. Destroy it.’

During
the next week three copies of the text were executed in the basement of Dollar
Bill’s new home in Georgetown. No one was allowed to enter the room while he
was working, and the door remained locked whenever he took a break. He worked
in two-hour shifts and then rested for two hours. Light meals were brought to
him twice a day and he drank nothing but water, even in the evening. At night,
exhausted, he would often sleep for eight hours without stirring.

Once
he had completed the three copies of the forty-six-line text, Dollar Bill
declared himself satisfied with two of them. The third was destroyed.

Angelo
reported back to Cavalli, who seemed pleased with Dollar Bill’s progress,
although neither of them had been allowed to see the two final copies.

‘Now
comes the hard part,’ Bill told Angelo. ‘Fifty-six signatures, every one
requiring a different nib, a different pressure, a different shade of ink, and
every one a work of art in itself.’

Angelo
accepted this analysis, but was less happy to learn that Dollar Bill insisted
on a day off before he began to work on the names because he needed to get
paralytically drunk.

Professor
Bradley flew into Washington on Tuesday evening and booked himself into the
Ritz Carlton – the one luxury the CIA allowed the schizophrenic
agent/professor. After a light dinner in the Jockey Club, accompanied only by a
book, Scott retired to his room on the fifth floor. He flicked channels from
one bad movie to another before falling asleep thinking about Susan Anderson.

He
woke at six-thirty the next morning, rose, and read the Washington Post from
cover to cover, concentrating on the articles dealing with Rabin’s visit. He
got dressed watching a CNN report on the Israeli Prime Minister’s speech at a
White House dinner that had taken place the previous evening. Rabin assured the
new President he wanted the same warm relationship with America that his
predecessor had enjoyed.

After
a light breakfast, Scott strolled out of the hotel to find a company car
waiting for him.

‘Good
morning, sir,’ were the only words his driver spoke on the entire journey. It
was a pleasant trip out of the city that Wednesday morning, but Scott smiled
wryly as he watched commuters blocking all three lanes going in the opposite
direction.

When
he arrived at Dexter Hutchins’ office ten minutes before his appointment, Tess,
the Deputy Director’s secretary, waved him straight through.

Dexter
greeted Scott with a firm handshake and a cursory attempt at an apology.

‘Sorry
to pull you in at such short notice,’ he said, removing the butt of a cigar
from his mouth, ‘but the Secretary of State wants you to be present for his
working meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister. They’re having one of the
usual official lunches, rack of lamb and irrelevant small talk, and they expect
to start the working session around three.’

‘But
why would Christopher want me there?’ asked Scott.

‘Our
man in Tel Aviv says Rabin is going to come up with something that isn’t
officially on the agenda. That’s all he could find out. No details. You know as
much about the Middle East as anyone in the department, so Christopher wants
you around. I’ve had less put the btest data together so that you’ll be right
up to date by the time we get to this afternoon’s meeting.’ Dexter Hutchins
picked up a pile of files from the corner of his desk and handed them to Scott.
The inevitable ‘Top Secret’ was stamped on each of them, despite the fact that
a lot of the information they contained could be found strewn across the
Foreign Desk of the Washington Post.

‘The
first file is on the man himself and Labour Party policy; the others are on the
PLO, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, all in reference to
our current defence policy. If Rabin’s hoping to get more money out of us, he
can think again, especially after Clinton’s speech last week on domestic
policy. There’s a copy in the bottom file.’