第 29 页

?Yesterday, Mr. Laing, you came to see my colleague here, having quit Saudi Arabia by whatever means you were able, and made serious allegations concerning the integrity of Mr. Steven Pyle.?

Laing was worried. Mr. Laing? Where was ?Andy　 They always first-named each other in the bank, part of the family atmosphere New York insisted on.

?And I brought a mass of computer printout to back up what I had found,? he said carefully, but his stomach was churning. Something was wrong. The general manager waved dismissively at the mention of Laing?sevidence.

?Yesterday I also received a long letter from Steve Pyle. Today I had a lengthy phone call. It is perfectly clear to me, and to the internal accountant here, that you are a rogue, Laing, and an embezzler.?

Laing could not believe his ears. He shot a glance for support at the accountant. The man stared at the ceiling.

?I have the story,? said the GM. ?The full story. The real story.?

In case Laing was unfamiliar with it, he told the young man what he now knew to be true. Laing had been embez-zling money from a client?s account, the Ministry of Public Works. Not a large amount in Saudi terms, but enough; one percent of every invoice paid out to contractors by the Minis-try. Mr. Amin had unfortunately missed spotting the figures but Mr. Al-Haroun had seen the flaws and alerted Mr. Pyle.

The general manager at Riyadh, in an excess of loyalty, had tried to protect Laing?scareer by only insisting that every riyal be returned to the Ministry?s account, something that had now been done.

Laing?sresponse to this extraordinary solidarity from a colleague, and in outrage at losing his money, had been to spend the night in the Jiddah Branch falsifying the records to ?prove? that a much larger sum had been embezzled with the cooperation of Steve Pyle himself.

?But the tape I brought back　 protested Laing.

?Forgeries, of course. We have the real records here. This morning I ordered our central computer here to hack into the Riyadh computer and do a check. The real records now lie there, on my desk. They show quite clearly what happened. The one percent you stole has been replaced. No other money is missing. The bank?s reputation in SaudiArabia has been saved, thank God?or, rather, thank Steve Pyle.?

?But it?s not true,? protested Laing, too shrilly. ?The skim Pyle and his unknown associate were perpetrating was ten percent of the Ministry accounts.?

The GM looked stonily at Laing and then at the evi-dence fresh in from Riyadh.

?Al,? he asked, ?do you see any record of ten percent being skimmed　

The accountant shook his head.

?That would be preposterous in any case,? he said. ?With such sums washing around, one percent might be hid-den in a big Ministry in those parts. But never ten percent. The annual audit, due in April, would have uncovered the swindle. Then where would you have been? In a filthy Saudi jail cell forever. We do assume, do we not, that the Saudi Government will still be there next April　

The GM gave a wintry smile. That was too obvious.

?No. I?m afraid,? concluded the accountant, ?that it?s an open-and-shut case. Steve Pyle has not only done us all a favor, he has done you one, Mr. Laing. He?s saved you from a long prison term.?

?Which I believe you probably deserve,? said the GM. ?We can?t inflict that in any case. And we don?t relish the scandal. We supply contract officers to many Third World banks, and a scandal we do not need. But you, Mr. Laing, no longer constitute one of those bank officers. Your dismissal letter is in front of you. There will, of course, be no sever-ance pay, and a reference is out of the question. Now please go.?

Laing knew it was a sentence: never to work in banking ever again, anywhere in the world. Sixty seconds later he was on the pavement of Lombard Street.

?

In Washington, Morton Stannard had listened to the rage ofZack as the spools unwound on the conference table in the Situation Room.

The news out of London that an exchange was imminent, whether true or false, had galvanized a resurgence of press frenzy in Washington. Since before dawn the White House had been deluged with calls for information and once again the press secretary was at his wits? end.

When the tape finally ran out the eight members present were silent with shock.

?The diamonds,? growled Odell. ?You keep promising and promising. Where the hell are they　

?They?re ready,? said Stannard promptly. ?I apologize for my over-optimism earlier. I know nothing of such matters?I thought arranging such a consignment would take less time. But they are ready?just under twenty-five thou-sand mixed stones, all authentic and valued at just over two million dollars.?

?Where are they　 asked Hubert Reed.

?In the safe of the head of the Pentagon office in New York, the office that handles our East Coast systems-purchasing. For obvious reasons, it?s a very secure safe.?

?What about shipment to London　 asked Brad John-son. ?I suggest we use one of our air bases in England. We don?t need problems with the press at Heathrow, or anything like that.?

?I am meeting in one hour with a senior Air Force ex-pert,? said Stannard. ?He will advise how best to get the package there.?

?We will need a Company car to meet them on arrival and get them to Quinn at the apartment,? said Odell. ?Lee, you arrange that. It?s your apartment, after all.?

?No problem,? said Lee Alexander of the CIA.

?I?ll have Lou Collins pick them up himself at the air base on touchdown.?

?By dawn tomorrow, London time,? said the Vice Pres-ident. ?In London, in Kensington, by dawn. We know the details of the exchange yet　

?No,? said the Director of the FBI. ?No doubt Quinn will work out the details in conjunction with our people.?

?

TheU. S. Air Force proposed the use of a single-seat jet fighter to make the Atlantic crossing, an F-15 Eagle.

?It has the range if we fit it with FAST packs,? the Air Force general told Morton Stannard at the Pentagon. ?We must have the package delivered to the Air National Guard base at Trenton, New Jersey, no later than twoP.M. ?

The pilot selected for the mission was an experienced lieutenant colonel with more than seven thousand flying hours on the F-15. Through the late morning the Eagle at Trenton was serviced as seldom before in her existence, and the FAST packs were fitted to each of the port and starboard air-intake trunks. These packs, despite their name, would not increase the Eagle?s speed; the acronym stands for ?fuel and sensor tactical,? and they are really long-range extra fuel tanks.

Stripped down, the Eagle carries 23,000 pounds of fuel, giving her a ferry range of 2,878 miles; the extra 5,000 pounds in each FAST pack boost that to 3,450 miles.

In the navigation room Colonel Bowers studied his flight plan over a sandwich lunch. From Trenton to the USAF base at Upper Heyford outside the city of Oxford was 3,063 miles. The meteorology men told him the wind strengths at his chosen altitude of 50,000 feet, and he worked out that he would make it in 5.4 hours flying atMach .95 and would still have 4,300 pounds of fuel remaining.

At 2:00P.M. a big KC-135 tanker lifted off from An-drews Air Force Base outside Washington and headed for a midair rendezvous at 45,000 feet over the eastern seaboard with the Eagle.

At Trenton there was one last holdup. Colonel Bowers was in his flying suit by three o?clock, and ready to go, when the long black limousine from the Pentagon?s New York bu-reau came through the main gate. A civilian official, accom-panied by an Air Force general, handed over a plain flatattach? case and a slip of paper with the number of the com-bination lock.

Hardly had he done so when another unmarked limou-sine entered the base. There was a flustered conference on the tarmac between two groups of officials. Eventually theattach? case and the slip of paper were retrieved from Colo-nel Bowers and taken to the rear seat of one of the cars.

Theattach? case was opened and its contents, a flat pack of black velvet, ten inches by twelve inches and three inches thick, was transferred to a newattach? case. This was the one that was handed to the impatient colonel.

Interceptor fighters are not accustomed to hauling freight, but a storage space had been prepared right beneath the pilot?s seat, and it was here theattach? case was slotted. The colonel lifted off at 3:31P.M.

He climbed rapidly to 45,000 feet, called up his tanker, and topped off his fuel tanks to begin the run for England with a full load. After fueling he nosed up to 50,000 feet, turned to his compass course for Upper Hey ford, and boosted power to settle atMach .95, just below the shudder zone that marks the sound barrier. He caught his expected westerly tailwind over Nantucket.

?

Three hours after the Eagle rose from the tarmac at Trenton, a scheduled airlines jumbo jet had taken off from Kennedy for London Heathrow. In the business class section was a tall and clean-cut young man who had caught the flight after connecting from Houston. He worked for a major oil corpo-ration there called Pan-Global and felt he was privileged to be entrusted by his employer, the proprietor himself, with such a discreet mission.

Not that he had the faintest idea of the contents of the envelope he carried within the breast pocket of the jacket he declined to hand over to the stewardess. Nor did he wish to know. He only knew it must contain documents of great cor-porate sensitivity, since it could not be mailed or faxed or sent by commercial courier pouch.

His instructions were clear; he had repeated them many times. He was to go to a certain address on a certain day?the following day?at a certain hour. He was not to ring the bell, just drop the envelope through the letter slot, then re-turn to Heathrow Airport and Houston. Tiring but simple. Cocktails were being served, before dinner; he did not drink alcohol, so he gazed out the window.

The sky had long turned inky black above the heaving winter wastes of the North Atlantic, but above the cloud layer the stars were hard and bright. The young man staring out of the porthole could not know that far ahead of him another jet plane was howling through the darkness towards England. Neither he nor Colonel Bowers would ever know of the other?s existence, nor that each was racing towards the British capital on different missions; and neither would ever know exactly what it was he carried.

The colonel got there first. He touched down at Upper Heyford right on schedule at 1:55A.M . local time, disturb-ing the sleep of the villagers beneath him as he made his final turn into the approach lights. The tower told him which way to taxi and he finally stopped in a bright ring of lights inside a hangar whose doors closed the moment he shut down his engines. When he opened the canopy the base commander approached with a civilian. It was the civilian who spoke.

?Colonel Bowers　

?That?s me, sir.?

?You have a package for me　

?I have anattach? case. Right under my seat.?

He stretched stiffly, climbed out, and clambered down the steel ladder to the hangar floor. Helluva way to see En-gland, he thought. The civilian went up the ladder and re-trieved theattach? case. He held out his hand for the combination code. Ten minutes later Lou Collins was back in his Company limousine, heading toward London. He reached the Kensington apartment at ten minutes after four. The lights still burned; no one had slept. Quinn was in the sitting room drinking coffee.

Collins laid theattach? case on the low table, consulted the slip of paper, and tumbled the rollers. From the case he took the flat, near-square, velvet-wrapped package and handed it to Quinn.

?In your hands, by dawn,? he said. Quinn hefted the pack in his hands. Just over a kilogram?about three pounds.

?You want to open it　 asked Collins.

?No need,? said Quinn. ?If they are glass, or paste, or any part of them are, or any one of them, someone will prob-ably blow away Simon Cormack?s life.?

?They wouldn?t do that,? said Collins. ?No, they?re genuine all right. Do you think he?ll call　

?Just pray he does,? said Quinn.

?And the exchange　

?We?ll have to arrange it today.?

?How are you going to handle it, Quinn　

?My way.?

He went off to his room to take a bath and dress. For quite a lot of people the last day of October was going to be a very rough day indeed.

?

The young man from Houston landed at 6:45A.M . London time and, with only a small suitcase of toiletries, moved quickly through customs and into the concourse of Number Three Building. He checked his watch and knew he had three hours to wait. Time to use the washroom, freshen up, have breakfast, and take a cab to the center of London?s West End.

At 9:55 he presented himself at the door of the tall and impressive apartment house a block back from Great Cum-berland Place in the Marble Arch district. He was five min-utes early. He had been told to be exact. From across the street a man in a parked car watched him, but he did not know that. He strolled up and down for five minutes, then, on the dot of ten, dropped the fat envelope through the letter slot of the apartment house. There was no hall porter to pick it up. It lay there on the mat inside the door. Satisfied that he had done as he had been instructed, the young American walked back down to Bayswater Road and soon hailed a cab for Heathrow.

Hardly was he around the corner than the man in the parked car climbed out, crossed the road, and let himself into the apartment house. He lived there?had done for sev-eral weeks. His sojourn in the car was simply to assure him-self that the messenger responded to the given description and had not been followed.

The man picked up the fallen envelope, took the lift to the eighth floor, let himself into his apartment, and slit open the envelope. He was satisfied as he read, and his breath came in snuffles, whistling through the distorted nasal pas-sages as he breathed. Irving Moss now had what he believed would be his final instructions.

* * *

In the Kensington apartment the morning ticked away in si-lence. The tension was almost tangible. In the telephone ex-change, in Cork Street, in Grosvenor Square, the listeners sat hunched over their machines waiting for Quinn to say something or McCrea or Sam Somerville to open their mouths. There was silence on the speakers. Quinn had made it plain that ifZack did not call, it was over. The careful search for an abandoned house and a body would have to begin.

AndZack did not call.

?

At half past ten Irving Moss left his Marble Arch flat, took his rental car from its parking bay, and drove to Paddington Station. His beard, grown in Houston during the planning stages, had changed the shape of his face. His Canadian passport was beautifully forged and had brought him effort-lessly into the Republic of Ireland and thence on the ferry to England. His driving license, also Canadian, had caused no problems in the renting of a compact car on long-term lease. He had lived quietly and unobtrusively for weeks behind Marble Arch, one of more than a million foreigners in the British capital.