Line of Succession (31 page)

In the meantime Mezetti had been making telephone calls every two hours at even-numbered hours. Because the calls were international—Gibraltar to Spain—it was easy enough to ascertain the number of the telephone receiving his calls; the phone was in Almería. Every call since eight o'clock the previous evening had been monitored by British and American agents but the eavesdropping hadn't contributed much because Mezetti's telephone calls were never answered. Mezetti would let it ring four times and hang up.

A continuation signal, Lime guessed. Someone within earshot of the recipient telephone was supposed to be listening at even-numbered hours. If the phone did not ring it would indicate Mezetti had been detained. But Lime had ordered a stakeout on the house in Almería. It had gone into effect before ten o'clock last night; since then Mezetti had made seven calls to that number but no one was there.
Guardianos
had combed the house and found it vacant. Neighboring houses had been evacuated, their residents taken into custody, but it didn't look as if any of the arrested people had any connection with the kidnapping. The line had been traced from the receiving phone to Almería Central in order to find out if the kidnappers had a tap on it but none had been discovered. Even the long-distance telephone operators were being interrogated.

It was a puzzle and it nudged various suspicions in the back of Lime's mind. But if it was a red herring it could operate either of two ways and there wasn't time to analyze it to death. Mezetti was a warm body, Lime had a rope on him, and he intended to keep hold of its end until he saw where it was going to drag him.

So Lime in the Cortina awaited the emergence of a Mario Mezetti he had never laid eyes on. He had a collection of photographs and the information that Mario had been reported this morning wearing a belted brown leather coat, brown slacks and suede desert boots. He'd be difficult to miss; at any rate a gray Rolls with his luggage aboard awaited him in front of the bank and Lime's men had all the exits covered.

Lime had taken charge last night but had left the routine surveillance to his armies. If Mezetti saw him too often he would begin to recognize Lime's face. It was always better to let the minions handle shadow jobs with frequent changes of relays—always fresh faces.

Mezetti's Cessna Citation had a cruising speed of four hundred mph and a range of twelve hundred miles. Lime had inscribed a circle of that radius on a map and arranged for close-interval air cover within it. Sixth Fleet had jets airborne waiting to shadow the Citation and Lime had organized a second-string team of commandeered civilian planes because the Navy Phantoms, easily recognizable, would have to keep their distance and tail mainly by radar to avoid alerting Mezetti. If Mezetti decided to fly at treetop altitudes where ground contours would absorb his radar image, he would lose Navy Air; it was better to keep visual contact. The CIA had set up a complex of ground spotter stations and Lime had a dozen planes ready to pick up the baton depending which direction Mezetti flew—Spanish jets now orbiting Malága and Seville and Cape St. Vincent, a Moroccan oil-company plane over Cape Negro, Portuguese civil-air over Lisbon and Madeira, a pair of seaplanes at Majorca and Mers-el-Kebir.

At ten forty-three the young man for whom the police and security forces of fourteen nations had been searching emerged from the main entrance of the bank carrying a heavy suitcase and entered the rear passenger compartment of the big elderly Rolls.

Lime stirred the Cortina's transmission and squirted the little car into the northbound street ahead of the Rolls. Another car would be closing in behind it. Lime drove unhurriedly past the old Moorish castle and out past the open crossgates which were closed across the highway whenever an airplane was making use of the GibAir runway. Lime turned into the car park by the terminal, glancing in the rearview mirror and seeing the Rolls draw up at the passenger door.

Lime went through private doors, had a brief conference with Chad Hill in the airport manager's office, passed the customs line without a check and had ensconced himself beside the Navy pilot in the Lear jet before Mario Mezetti came along the runway in a courtesy car and was decanted beside the Citation, which stood warming up about fifty yards down-runway from the Lear.

When Lime's plane swung around into position to make its takeoff run Lime twisted his head and through the plexiglass saw the Citation begin to roll.

Lime was off the ground, pressed back into his seat by the G-force of takeoff, three minutes ahead of the Citation. The Navy pilot put the Lear out over the Straits and orbited off Tangier until the Citation climbed steeply into sight and banked around toward the northeast.

“That's enough of a lead,” Lime said. “Let's go.”

The Navy pilot pulled the Lear around and held a position directly behind, and slightly below, the Citation. It was the Citation's blind spot: Mezetti's pilot would not be able to see the Lear in his rearview mirror unless he made a sudden turn or backflip.

The Citation steadied on a course east by northeast. It didn't climb above three thousand feet. Lime, a few miles behind and five hundred feet lower, studied the millionth-scale map on his lap and reached for the copilot's headset. “Is this thing locked in?”

“Clear channel,” the pilot said, and reached for a dial.

Lime settled the earphones over his head. “Is there a send button?”

“No. It's an open two-way. You just talk and listen.”

That simplified things, eliminated the need for an “over” at the end of each transmission. Lime spoke into the mike that hovered before his mouth:

“Hill, this is Lime.”

“Hill right here.” The voice was metallic but clear in the headset.

“Have you got their course?”

“Yes sir. I've alerted Majorca.”

“It looks like a change in flight plan.”

“Yes sir. We're ready for it.”

The Citation flew straight and level for fifteen minutes and then the pilot jogged Lime's knee. “He's got his wheels down.”

Lime looked up from the map in time to see the Citation start a slow left turn, the nose going down into an easy glide. The sea was beneath the Lear's starboard wing, the Spanish coastline immediately below and the foothills rising to his left; the peaks of the Sierras loomed several thousand feet above the airplane, some miles north. It began to appear the Citation was descending straight toward the mountains.

“Hill, this is Lime.”

“Yes sir. We've still got him on radar—hold it, he just disappeared.”

“I've still got him. He's put his gear down.”

The airplane ahead was still turning slowly. Lime nodded to the pilot and the Lear followed in the Cessna's wake.

“You want our gear down, Mr. Lime?”

“No.” There were no commercial airfields in the area toward which the Citation was descending. If Mezetti was about to set down in a pasture it would hardly do to land right behind him. “Keep some altitude,” Lime said. “Swing a little wide—if he lands we want to see the place but we'll shoot past.”

“All right sir.”

Hill on the headset: “Sir, he picked up the consignment as ordered.”

“Thank you.” Mezetti had telephoned the bank yesterday and requested they have one hundred thousand dollars in cash on hand for him. This was confirmation he had collected it. Clearly then he was doing courier duty and it could be assumed he was now headed for a rendezvous with the others in order to turn over the money.

It all looked a little too easy; but Lime reminded himself they wouldn't have been shadowing Mezetti at all if it hadn't been for the single fortuitous fingerprint on the garage light switch in Palamos.

The Cessna was quite low along the foothills, banking back and forth, obviously searching for something. Lime said, “Keep going—make it look as if we're on a regular flight to Majorca. Don't slow down and don't circle.”

Into the microphone he said, “Chad?”

“Yes sir.”

“He's going down in map sector Jay-Niner, the northwest quadrant.”

“Jay-Niner northwest, yes sir. I'll alert the nearest ground team.”

“We're going by. We'll want a crisscross.”

“Yes sir.”

The Spanish plane from Malága would overfly the sector within four minutes to confirm the Citation had actually landed. Lime, looking back with his cheek to the plexiglass window, had a last glimpse of the little jet descending toward a field encircled by foothills. There were two or three small peasant-farm buildings on the edge of the field and a ribbony road that headed south toward Almería.

“Swing out over the Med and take us back to Gibraltar.”

The Lear touched down neatly and braked the length of the runway and made a slow turn at the end of the strip to taxi back to the terminal.

Chad Hill came loping out to meet him. The young man seemed unable to contain himself. “They've got another tape!”

Lime said, “What tape?”

“He left one of those tapes on the roof of the hotel. You know, with a transmitter. Like last time.”

“Fairlie's voice again?”

“No sir, it's in Morse.”

He was out of cigarettes. “Anybody got a cigarette?” One of the technicians obliged. It was a Gauloise and when Lime lit up, rancid fumes instantly filled the little room.

The police station was crowded; the CIA people were working on the apparatus Mezetti had left on the hotel roof. It had a timer set to start the tape playback at eight o'clock tonight.

It was just short of noon. Lime said, “Put it together and take it back where you found it.”

Chad Hill's mouth dropped open.

Lime said in a mild voice that didn't betray his exasperation, “If that thing doesn't broadcast on time they'll know something went wrong.”

Chad Hill swallowed visibly. Lime said, “You've made copies by now.”

“Yes sir. Sent it to Washington by scrambler transmission.”

“Any prints on that equipment?”

“No.”

“All right then, take them up on the hotel roof and watch them set it up. When they're finished, bring them back to this room and post a man on the door. Nobody goes in or out of this room until eight tonight—and no phone calls except to me. Right?”

“Yes sir.”

“You understand this, do you?”

“Yes sir. It'll give us a jump on the rest of the spooks—no leaks. I understand.”

“Good.” Obviously Chad thought the measure was extreme but he knew how to follow orders and that was why Lime had picked him. “When you're done here find me—I'll have more chores for you.”

“Yes sir.” Chad swung away.

Lime reread the transcription in his fist. The Morse decode was brief:

ATTENTION WORLD X FAIRLIE IS ALIVE X

FLY WASHINGTON SEVEN TO GENEVA BEFORE

MIDNIGHT 17 JANUARY X MOVEMENT MUST BE

PUBLIC WITH RADIO & LIVE TV COVERAGE X

AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS GENEVA X

At twelve-fifty there was a flash from Chad Hill: “He's taking off again.”

“You sure Mezetti's still in the plane?”

“Yes sir. They've had field glasses on him for half an hour.”

“What's he been doing?”

“Nothing. Poking around the place as if he lost something. Hooker says he looks confused and kind of pissed off—as if he expected somebody to meet him there and they didn't show up.”

“Did he spend any time inside the farm buildings?”

“Long enough to poke around. He came right out again.”

“What about the suitcase?”

“He never took it off the plane.”

“All right. Track the plane and send Hooker down to look through those buildings.”

“He's already down there sir. That's where he's calling from. I've got him on the other phone—you want me to ask him anything?”

“Well I assume he found nothing?” Lime was a little wry.

“That's right sir. No sign anyone's been there in weeks. Except Mezetti of course.”

“How about the basement?”

“No sir. He looked.”

“All right. Call me back.”

He hung up and lit another cigarette and tried to get his brain in working order. Somewhere in all this there ought to be a pattern but it wasn't emerging. Perhaps he was missing it: he was running on his batteries, he'd had less than four hours' sleep last night and it hadn't been enough to make up for the previous two days without.

The phone rang. Chad Hill again. “For Christ's sake. He's coming back to Gibraltar. The pilot just radioed for landing instructions.”

“All right. Put an eight-man tail on Mezetti. As soon as he's separated from the pilot bring the pilot in.”

“Yes sir.”

Lime cradled it but within seconds it rang again. “Sir, it's Mr. Satterthwaite on the scrambler. You want to come over here?”

Satterthwaite's high-pitched voice was shrill with unreasoning anger: he was getting rattled, things were piling up against him. “What have you got out there, David? And don't tell me you've drawn a blank.”

“We're moving. Not far and not fast, but we're moving. You saw the message we're supposed to get tonight?”

“A lot of good that is,” Satterthwaite said. “Listen, they've taken Dexter Ethridge to Walter Reed in an ambulance.”

It made Lime sit bolt upright. “Bad?”

“Nobody knows yet. He seems to be out cold.”

“You mean somebody tried to assassinate him?”

“No. Nothing like that. Natural causes, whatever it is—he was home in bed, or in the bathroom. Listen, you know what happens if Ethridge packs up. We've got to have Fairlie back by the twentieth.”

“Well you've still got a line of succession.”

“Milt Luke?” Satterthwaite snorted. “Get him back, David.”

As usual Satterthwaite was trying to sound like Walter Pidgeon in
Command Decision
and as usual his voice was wrong for it. Lime ignored the heroics. “What's the decision on the exchange?”