The Care of Time (13 page)

‘I think you do. The Hotel Mansour? That’s where the Iraqi security police arrested you, wasn’t it?’

‘So what is it
you
can’t promise me?

‘Iraqi heads on a platter of course. The sweet taste of revenge that Zander talked about in his letter and McGuire was briefed to offer more explicitly when he interviewed
you.’ He threw me an ugly look as he levered himself up out of his chair. ‘I’m not so simple, Mr Halliday, as to suppose that it was the offer of a fifty-thousand-dollar fee that led you to accept Zander’s invitation so promptly. You have some old scores to settle. You must have seen in this Zander book a possible opportunity, perhaps the one you’d been waiting for. Iraqi government involvement in world terrorist movements and adventures has been notorious for years. If Zander had really meant to start speaking out, giving case histories and naming names, you could have had the time of your life writing in your own personal list of candidates for public damnation. Your meeting with him this evening must have been a disappointment to you.’

‘I’ve been disappointed before.’

‘No doubt. For Zander, of course, the consequences may be more serious. He’ll have to re-think his retirement plan completely and I don’t believe he can do it in the time.’

‘Retirement plan?’ I thought that his English had finally let him down. ‘You mean the deal he’s trying to set up?’

He had picked up a bottle with some water still in it and was refilling his glass. An impatient movement of his hand slopped water on the table. He put the bottle down with exaggerated care.

‘I said retirement plan, Mr Halliday. I
meant
retirement plan. I am not, however, talking about pensions and cottages in the country. This retirement is from a field of battle on which he has fought successfully for years, and it is very far from being voluntary. Why, suddenly, must he retire? Why, suddenly, is someone willing to pay Rasmuk prices to have him killed? No doubt the answer is that he has been too long in the field, that he has made too many enemies and that they have at last succeeded in combining against him. We can’t be sure. All that concerns us is that he has had his day, that he knows it and that he seeks a guarantee of lasting safety for himself and his family of a sort that only the west can give. In return he offers something that we might find of military value to us. Might or might not. The offer itself, if real, is
certainly of interest. At any rate, both the offer and the ability of his patron to deliver what is offered must be carefully evaluated.’

‘If he’s as rich as I’m told he is, I should have thought that he could have bought his own safety.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘In a fortress buried in some South American jungle? He is not a war criminal. Is he any kind of criminal? I would find it hard to say. Is he more a criminal than any other sharp businessman or soldier of fortune?’

‘The FBI might think so. About the Italian police I wouldn’t know.’

He chuckled. ‘Oh come now, Mr Halliday, you’re not as naîve as that. In your profession you must have met lots of very rich self-made men, as rich as or even richer than Zander. They always tend to regard themselves as a little above the law, wouldn’t you say? Zander’s no different in that respect. The unusual thing about him is his vulnerability. He’s very much the family man I gather. He’s had three marriages. His first wife died, the second was killed in the Algerian war. Both had children of whom he is very fond. He also has adopted children. His third wife, with her two children by him, is at present in America, illegally and in hiding according to your old friend. They are in hiding so that they can’t be taken as hostages. He has been on the run for five months now, ever since the contract on him was put out to Rasmuk. Do you think that a man like he is could accept such a state of affairs – separation from his wife and young children, being holed up in safe houses, rooms in third-rate hotels with exercise bicycles and sun lamps for company? This proposition, this bargain he has managed to put together from a distance and by manipulating old associates is his way back to freedom and family. Or so he thinks. That’s the message he sends with his proposition. You ask about the dangers. For him, the next few days will be critical. To deliver what he has promised he has to show his face and run a few risks. Anyway, that was how he planned it. He assumed, of course, that you would automatically
respond favourably to an official request for co-operation.’ He shrugged. ‘Since you don’t feel able to …’

I cut him short. ‘No, Herr Schelm. You’re not having me in floods of tears over the Zander family. What I asked you about was the possible extent of the danger to
me
. What risks are you asking
me
to run?’

He stared, then sat down again and took a sip of water. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll do my best. Rasmuk have only one interest in you. You’re here to see the man they’re being paid to kill. They’ve no reason to disbelieve your cover story. You’re a professional writer brought here at Pacioli’s expense to see Zander about a book he’s writing. Obviously, though, they’ll try to use you to find him. Miss Chihani’s job is to see that they don’t succeed. Your only task for us would be to maintain communications between Zander and my people, to act as our liaison man with him and his people for a few critical days, a week at most. Naturally, you would take care to stay clear of any possible line of fire. Miss Chihani seems a very capable person. How did she justify to you her actions here this evening?’

‘She wanted me out before enemy surveillance could become one hundred percent effective. Or words to that effect.’

He nodded. ‘It might have worked very well for a first meeting if you had been briefed in America as they had hoped and expected. If you had been, of course, Zander would know by now how his proposal had been received and whether all his planning was going to pay off.’

‘Whereas now he’ll have to wait until tomorrow or the next day.’

He looked at me sharply. ‘No jokes please, Mr Halliday.’

‘I wasn’t joking. If it’s not all that dangerous I may as well take the whole fifty thousand.’

‘There are going to be no changes of mind?’

‘I don’t anticipate any, but I’m still curious to know why the CIA don’t want to deal direct with Zander.’

‘I know that you distrust your old CIA friend but what he
told you was quite true. In the Persian Gulf these days they are very sensitive. Even the little potentates have very big egos. If you knew the number of those who would be outraged by the idea of an American government agency even
listening
to what Zander has to propose, you would see why it must be done this way. This way, when the story is leaked or we are seen to be negotiating, the CIA and its masters can place their hands on their hearts and deny all. “Don’t forget,” they will be able to say, “the southern flank of Nato lies far south on the Tropic of Cancer. If some of our Nato allies choose secretly to conspire with the man known as Karlis Zander, to make secret military and naval preparations suggested by him to help protect their oil supply routes, how were we to stop them?” ’

‘I see. Is that what Zander has to sell?’

So then he explained what the deal was. After that he told me what our initial reply to the Zander proposal was to be and how he wanted it delivered. If, when that stage was over, we were still in business, arrangements for the high-level meeting that Zander was insisting on could go ahead. If there was anything about the details of those arrangements that I didn’t like I should say so in the messages I would be sending.

It was quite late by the time we finished, but as I went with him to the door I remembered something and paused.

‘Since you’ve appointed yourself my new case officer,’ I said, ‘maybe I’d better know what the old one is saying about me these days.’

He looked puzzled. ‘I don’t think I quite …’

‘He said it to you in German just as he was leaving. I caught two or three words of it. I’m only curious.’

‘Ah yes. I remember.’ He pursed his lips and thought hard before he went on. ‘The German idiom is very different, you understand, but I’ll do my best to translate. He said: “Dieter, don’t say I didn’t warn you. The son-of-a-bitch hasn’t changed a bit.” ’

It was exactly noon when Chihani called. She wasted no time on idle courtesies.

‘All telephones are insecure, Mr Halliday, especially the one you are using at this moment. Remember that, please. Are you alone in your room?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you read the typescript?’

‘Yes.’

‘
All
of it? Every page?’

‘Those parts of it that I couldn’t read for myself have now been thoroughly explained to me. Okay?’

‘
When
were they explained?’

‘Last night when I got back here. Do you want to know who did the explaining?’

‘
No!
Offer no information. Just answer my questions and listen carefully. I have only one instruction to add to those you have already been given. You should have your passport and your room key with you. Everything else is as instructed. Do you understand?’

‘I guess so.’

She hung up.

Malpensa, the older and least fog-prone of Milan’s airports, is forty-five kilometres north of the city along the autostrada to Varese. Taxis, according to the hotel doorman, were in short supply at that time of day. Happily, though, he commanded the allegiance of the driver of a Mercedes limousine. Simply to oblige the doorman, this faithful fellow was ready to postpone his lunch in order to take me where I wanted to go.

The fare asked was exorbitant but I only offered a token protest. The Mercedes would be easier on my developing
bruises than a compact cab of the kind I had ridden in the night before. Besides, I needed the reassurance of a little comfort. Five hours’ drugged sleep and a starch-rich breakfast with lukewarm coffee had restored my ability to think clearly. It had also clarified my recollection of the patient skill with which Schelm had persuaded me into foolishness. Specific misgivings had soon followed.

Schelm’s description of the original Rasd gang had been reasonably truthful. He hadn’t tried to soft-pedal it or play down the efficiency of the dedicated maniacs who served it, but I happened to know that the organization had never really been as fresh and raw as he seemed to think. I had heard of it first when I was working in the Lebanon and Beirut was still the Paris of the Middle East. Rasd’s European base then had just moved to Rome and its assassination squads were beginning to be spoken of with awe as well as respect. Their characteristic way of doing business had been to accept a hit contract and then approach the prospective victim to see if he wanted to pay a bit more than his enemy had offered and so be allowed to keep his life.

The possibility of those bright, experienced Croatians, those clever crooks who had turned Rasd into Rasmuk, deciding to stop selling such profitable labour-saving options seemed remote; as remote as the possibility of Zander’s having rejected one if it had been offered to him. The hubris of the rich can, of course, render them absurdly touchy, but for a non-Arab businessman operating at the highest levels in the Persian Gulf there could be no loss of face at all in buying protection for himself and his family. Zander’s defensive tactics were far more demeaning. The reason for them could only be that he had no alternative, that holing up in an Italian safe-house-cum-office had been the only way the man had had left of staying alive and, to a limited extent, in business without compromising his family’s hide-out in America.

The price on the Rasmuk contract was also disturbing. When I had been in the Lebanon it had been common
knowledge that Rasd had been offered the gold equivalent of twenty million Swiss francs to assassinate Colonel Qaddafi, the Libyan head of state. The Rasd hit teams had turned the job down; not, however, because the price was too low, but because the Colonel himself was one of their most valued clients, a constant user of their various services and a prompt payer too. Times had changed, of course, but, even allowing for inflation, twenty million Swiss was still a big fee for that kind of job; and Zander was no head of state. If that was the agreed price for killing him someone had to be very serious about wanting him dead; serious enough, and powerful enough too, to be able to persuade the top management of Rasmuk that this was one contract that no one was auctioning off to the prospective victim. Who could the someone be?

I didn’t believe in Schelm’s old-enemy theory and he hadn’t sounded all that convinced by it himself. Revenge may be sweet, but only if it carries a reasonable price tag. Besides, if any group of Zander’s known enemies – former business rivals or cheated associates presumably – had suddenly clubbed together to put out a multi-million hit contract on him there would be nothing secret about the names of the club members. Every gossip in the Middle East would have had the story. This was different. This contract had to have a political motive behind it. For instance, the Iraqis’ so-called ‘Arab Charter’ was a specific prohibition of just the kind of defence development programme that Zander was now busy touting on his patron’s behalf. My old jailers, the
mukhabarat
in Baghdad, would certainly have been ready to kill him in order to put a stop to it. The hit contract, I maintained, would have gone out the moment the first whisper of what he was up to, of what he had been commissioned to do, had reached their ears.

Schelm had been patient with me but firm. He wished that I could have been right; it would in a way have simplified his task if Zander and I had been sharing a common enemy; but unfortunately I was wrong. In looking for the political motive behind the hit contract I was making sense, but I could stop
looking in the direction of Baghdad. Had Iraqi intelligence known what was in the wind, it would not have been Zander they would have gone for but his patron, the personage we had agreed to refer to respectfully but discreetly, from now on as ‘The Ruler’. And the Iraqis would not have gone to the expense of employing Rasmuk. They had their own trained assassination squads always there ready and eager to go to work for the glory of it alone.