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“Please. Where would you like me?”

“Any chair,” Padillo said. The Englishman took one where he could face the door and keep the rest of us in view. Hardman went into the kitchen and brought him back a cup of coffee. “You want any sugar or cream?”

“Just black, thank you.” We sat there and sipped our coffee and looked at each other. The Englishman appeared prosperous. He had on a bluish-grey tweed suit with a white shirt and a dark blue and black tie. The shoes under his chair were black, as were his socks. He had a slim build that looked deceptively frail until you noticed his shoulders. His eyes were brown and their lids seemed to droop over them as if he were only partly awake. I guessed him at around forty-five although there was no grey in the long brown hair that covered the tops of his ears. Maybe he dyed it.

“Seriously,” Price said to Padillo, “I heard you were missing and presumed dead. Can’t say I went into mourning.”

“I just took a little vacation,” Padillo said.

“South, I should say, by the tan you’re wearing.”

“South,” Padillo agreed.

“Africa?”

Padillo smiled pleasantly.

“Could it have been you who—”

“West Africa,” Dymec said. “I heard about it. Somebody dumped a lot of arms there. A great deal of 7.62 millimeter stuff.”

“You always did have an ear for languages, Dymec,” Padillo said. “You’re talking like an American now. When I first met you, it was more of a Manchester sound.”

“He talks good as I do,” Hardman said.

Price made a show of looking at his gold wristwatch. “Are we waiting for something or—”

“We’re waiting,” Padillo said.

We sat there in our stocking feet in the fancy apartment in the northwest section of Washington, D.C., the Negro, the Spanish-Estonian, the Pole, the Englishman, and the Scotch-Irish saloon-keeper, waiting for the Syrian-Hungarian woman to arrive. We sat there and drank the coffee in silence for fifteen minutes before the door chimes rang again.

“I’ll get it,” Padillo said. He rose and opened the door.

“Hello, Maggie, come in.”

She came in and the wait had been worth it. She was probably twenty-six or so, and her dark long hair hung carelessly about an oval face whose enormous black eyes swiftly took in everyone in the room. The eyes were complemented by a near-perfect straight nose that just escaped being a shade too long. Her mouth was wide and it was smiling at Padillo. It was a warm, dazzling smile and it looked as if it were used a lot to get a lot of things. She wore a loose coat of soft wool that was woven into large black, white and brown hounds-tooth checks. She said hello to Padillo and turned so that he could take her coat. She wore a white knit dress and her figure was close to perfection. She knew how to stand, how to walk and how to show it all off to its best advantage. Padillo put her coat on a chair.

“May I present Miss Magda Shadid,” he said. We all rose. She was worth getting up for. “Mr. McCorkle, Mr. Hardman, Mr. Dymec and Mr. Price.”

She nodded at each of us. Then she turned to Padillo and said: “I have something for you, Mike.”

“What?”

“This.”

She was the only woman I ever saw who slapped a man with her left hand after first feinting with her right.

Nine

She should have known better; perhaps she did. Padillo smacked her hard across the cheek with his right palm. It left a bright red mark. She threw her head back and laughed and you could see that her back teeth had no fillings.

“I’ve been practicing that for two years,” she said. “Maybe it will teach you not to stand me up again. I waited for two days in Amsterdam at that ghastly hotel.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t keep the date. I’m not sorry I hit you.”

“I expected you to hit me,” she said rubbing her cheek. “I would have been disappointed if you hadn’t. But you didn’t have to hit me so hard. Who are all these people?”

“Fellow associates.”

“They come in large sizes, don’t they?” she said smiling at Hardman. He smiled back. I decided it was just as well that Betty had gone to the movies.

“You don’t remember me, do you, Magda?” Dymec said. He still didn’t move his lips much when he spoke.

She looked at him and sniffed. “I remember you, but not with pleasure. If I have to remember someone with big, busy hands I’d prefer to remember someone like our sad-faced friend over here.” This time she smiled at me. I smiled back.

“You can turn off the charm, Maggie,” Padillo said. “We’re all impressed.”

“Then you can get me a drink, Michael. Scotch-on-the-rocks.” She swirled around, as if deciding whom she should do the favor of sitting next to, and chose Price. He nodded at her coolly.

“I’ll get the drink,” Hardman said. “Anybody else? I got Scotch, bourbon and gin.” Everyone chose Scotch.

“When we get our drinks, Padillo,” Price said, “could you take stage center and go through your ‘I suppose you’re all wondering why I’ve called you here’ routine? We are all here, aren’t we?”

“You’re here because I told you to be here,” Padillo said.

Hardman came back from the kitchen carrying three drinks in each hand. He served the woman first and she gave him another smile.

Padillo took a swallow of his and leaned forward. He directed his remarks at Price. “If I had my way, the three of you would be the last I’d ever call in on a deal like this. I don’t trust you; I don’t like you.”

“You like me just a little, don’t you, Michael?” Magda said in a sweet small voice.

“I especially like the way you crossed me in Budapest three years ago. I like that so much I sometimes dream about it.”

She shrugged and crossed her legs so that we could see them better. They were worth a glance.

“I got you here because I have a handle on each of you and you’re all so greedy that you’ll do anything to keep on doubling.”

The three of them looked at each other. “I say,” Price protested, “you’re talking a bit freely.”

“Am I? Well, I’m going to offer you the chance to form a Mutual-Protective-Association-Against-Michael-Padillo. In other words, I’m going to give you the chance to get off the hook and still keep drawing that fifteen hundred dollars a month from the Crosshatch Corporation. That’s where your check comes from every month, doesn’t it, Dymec?”

“Mine does,” the Pole said, “but it’s not fifteen hundred. It’s only thirteen hundred.”

“Mine’s only a thousand,” Magda said. Price said nothing.

Padillo grinned and turned to me. “They are greedy, aren’t they?”

“What do we have to do to get off the hook, Padillo?” Price asked. “And how will we know that we’re really off?”

“By the time you do what you have to do, you’ll have enough on me — and on my two friends here — to make us all even. It’ll be a standoff. I’ll be in no position to inform on you, because you could do the same to me — and to them.”

Dymec shook his head slowly. “I would like — as you say — to get off the hook. I don’t know about these two, but you wouldn’t call me in, Padillo, unless you had a particularly nasty job of work. One that could very easily get me killed.”

“You’re talking Manchesterese again, Dymec. Maybe I’ve been too positive. Let me put it this way: If all three of you don’t do exactly as I say, then I’m going to inform on you and two of you will be dead within a week and Price here might wind up in jail.”

“A powerful selling point,” Price said.

“I thought you might see it that way.”

“Get on with it, Michael,” Magda said. “You know you have us or we wouldn’t be here. I can’t say that I like someone gloating over me.”