Kip nodded. “What will you do with the rest of your time?”
“Show Jenny the town, I guess, maybe do some Christmas shopping.”
“Your tail will probably drop off after you’ve delivered the briefcase. If that happens, I’ll pull Manners off, too.”
“Thanks, I’d appreciate that. I don’t want to spend the weekend looking over my shoulder.”
“We’ll have a look at the briefcase overnight.”
“Be very careful, Kip; I don’t want any marks or scratches on the thing. It might even be alarmed or have a dye bomb inside.”
“We’ll X-ray it; don’t worry, I’ll handle it with kid gloves.”
Jesse glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to get back; anything else?”
Kip shook his head. “Nothing. If you need to reach me, there’ll always be somebody in this room. Just ask the operator to ring extension two-zero-four-six.”
Jesse looked at Kip narrowly. “Is my room bugged?”
“Behind the mirror over the chest of drawers.”
“Is there a two-way mirror?”
“Nope. We’ll respect your privacy.”
“Thanks.” He started for the door.
“Let me take a look first.” Kip opened the door and looked up and down the hall. “Okay, go.”
Jesse slipped out of the room and let himself in next door. He could hear the bath water running.
“Jesse?” she called.
“It’s me.”
“I’m going to smell great tonight,” she said. “There’s wonderful bath oil here.”
“You always smell great. We have to leave here in an hour.”
“I’ll be ready.”
Jesse stretched out on the bed and looked at the ceiling. With two men following him it was going to be a lot harder to accomplish what he had planned for New York City.
They had barely sat down at the restaurant when Jenny looked around and said, “There are naked ladies on the wall here.”
“I know. They were done by a famous illustrator of the thirties named Howard Chandler Christy.”
“How do you know that? How do you know this place come to that?”
“On my trip to the convention, a supplier brought me here and told me all about it. Do the naked ladies make you uncomfortable?”
She looked around the room. “They have different faces, but they all seem to have the same body.”
“He must have had a favorite model,” Jesse said, laughing.
“They don’t make me uncomfortable, exactly,” she said. “They make me want to see you naked.”
“Order some dinner,” he said, “and I’ll see what I can do.”
They swept back into the hotel room, full of good food and wine, stripping off clothes as they went.
“Just a minute,” she said, “I’ve got to go to the bathroom.”
Jesse made sure she was gone before he lifted the corner of the mirror, located the hidden microphone and held it to his lips. “Fuck you, Kip,” he said, “and the horse you rode in on.”
He found a pair of nail scissors, snipped off the microphone and dropped it behind the chest of drawers.
Jenny came running to him.
Chapter 30
Jesse left the hotel at eight o’clock the following morning, the briefcase in his hand, and walked uptown on Madison Avenue. Jenny had still been in the tub when he’d left, and she had a morning of sightseeing planned. The street was full of other men and women, most carrying briefcases, hurrying to their jobs, and he felt anonymous among them, until he caught sight of his tail in a shop window.
He had to be somewhere at nine; that gave him an hour to lose both his followers. He walked up to Fifty-Seventh and Madison, cut over to Fifth Avenue and headed for the park. He walked as far as the zoo, then exited the park and headed down Fifth at a leisurely pace, doing a lot of window shopping and making a point of not looking at his watch, taking in the available clocks on the street and in the shops to keep his schedule.
He made Rockefeller Center by a quarter to nine, and he stood for a moment and looked down into the ice rink. Then, still playing the tourist, he walked into 30 Rockefeller Plaza and found the nonstop elevator to the roof. On reaching the top he immediately got onto a down elevator. Back in the lobby he walked quickly to Fifth Avenue and north a block, skirting behind the statue of Atlas and into the building. A quick glance at the directory gave him the floor for the United States State Department. He walked up and down the lobby twice to make sure he had shaken his tail before taking the elevator.
His timing was good; the doors were just being unlocked and a line of a dozen people was being let in. He waited a few minutes for a vacant window, set the briefcase between his legs and pulled a thick envelope from his inside pocket. “I’d like to apply for passports for my family and myself,” he said, removing the documents and handing them to the woman behind the counter. “We’re flying to London tomorrow, and I understand a one-day service is available here.”
“That’s correct,” the woman said, looking through the papers. “Let’s see, you have three birth certificates and a marriage certificate?”
“That’s right,” he replied. “Here are the photographs of my wife and daughter. Are they all right? We took them ourselves.”
“They meet the specifications,” she said, handing him a set of forms. “Please fill out these applications; you can sign for your wife and daughter.”
Jesse sat down on a bench and quickly filled out the forms, inventing what information he didn’t have. He returned to the window.
“These seem to be complete,” she said. “There’s a fifty-five dollar charge for each passport, plus twenty-five dollars each for the one-day service, a total of two hundred and forty dollars.”
Jesse paid her in cash.
“And I’ll need to see some form of identification,” the woman said.
He produced his brand new Idaho license in the name of Jeffrey Warren.
“Thank you, Mr. Warren; you can pick up your passports after three o’clock.”
Jesse thanked the woman and left. They would certainly check with the county seat on the authenticity of the birth certificates, but that would not be a problem, since the originals were in the county registrar’s files.
He had been in the office about half an hour. He went back downstairs and resumed his stroll downtown. At Forty-Eighth Street he spotted a very worried young man in a gray suit and hat and looked away before he was seen. A pity, he thought; he would have liked to see the expression on the man’s face.
He walked downtown to Forty-Second Street, crossed to the east side of Fifth and strolled back uptown. He reached Sak’s Fifth Avenue at Forty-Ninth Street exactly at ten o’clock, and he spent the next forty-five minutes Christmas shopping. He found a beautiful negligee for Jenny and a very pretty winter coat for Carey that he hoped was the right size, and he bought some neckties for himself. He took the neckties with him and had the gifts sent to St. Clair.
At quarter to ten he started up Fifth Avenue again toward number 666. He reached the seventieth floor one minute before the appointed time and quickly found the suite. There was only a number on the door, and although the reception room was luxuriously appointed, there was no company name visible.
“May I help you?” the woman behind the reception desk said.
“My name is Jesse Barron. May I see Mr. Enzberg, please? I believe he’s expecting me.”
“Just one moment, please.” She picked up a phone, tapped in a number, spoke briefly in German and hung up. “He will be right with you,” she said to Jesse.
Shortly a beautifully dressed man in his forties appeared. “Mr. Barron? Will you come with me, please?”
Jesse followed the man to a small, clinically furnished office, where he was asked to wait. “May I have the case, please?”