Boris continued to look searchingly at him. Finally the Russian said: “I shall make the call.”
A protest rose to Ellis’s lips and he choked it back. This was a development he had not expected. He carefully maintained his I-don’t-give-a-damn pose while thinking furiously. How would Jane react to the voice of a stranger? And what if she were not there? What if she had decided to break her promise? He regretted using her as a cutout. But it was too late now.
“You’re a careful man,” he said to Boris.
“You, too. What is your phone number?”
Ellis told him. Boris wrote the number on the message pad by the phone, then began to dial.
The others waited in silence.
Boris said: “Hello? I am calling on behalf of Ellis.”
Perhaps the unknown voice would not throw her, Ellis thought: she had been expecting a somewhat wacky call anyway. Ignore everything except the address, he had told her.
“What?” Boris said irritably, and Ellis thought: Oh, shit, what is she saying now? “Yes, I am, but never mind that,” Boris said. “Ellis wants you to bring the mechanism to Room Forty-one at the Hôtel Lancaster in the rue de Berri.”
There was another pause.
Play the game, Jane, thought Ellis.
“Yes, it’s a very nice hotel.”
Stop kidding around! Just tell the man you’ll do it—please!
“Thank you,” Boris said, and he added sarcastically: “You are most kind.” Then he hung up.
Ellis tried to look as if he had expected all along there would be no problem.
Boris said: “She knew I was Russian. How did she find out?”
Ellis was puzzled for a moment, then realized. “She’s a linguist,” he said. “She knows accents.”
Pepe spoke for the first time. “While we’re waiting for this cunt to arrive, let’s see the money.”
“All right.” Boris went into the bedroom.
While he was out, Rahmi spoke to Ellis in a low hiss. “I didn’t know you were going to pull that trick!”
“Of course you didn’t,” said Ellis in a feigned tone of boredom. “If you had known what I was going to do, it wouldn’t have worked as a safeguard, would it?”
Boris came back in with a large brown envelope and handed it to Pepe. Pepe opened it and began counting one-hundred-franc notes.
Boris unwrapped the carton of Marlboros and lit a cigarette.
Ellis thought: I hope Jane doesn’t wait before making the call to “Mustafa.” I should have told her it was important to pass the message on immediately.
After a while Pepe said: “It’s all there.” He put the money back into the envelope, licked the flap, sealed it and put it on a side table.
The four men sat in silence for several minutes.
Boris asked Ellis: “How far away is your place?”
“Fifteen minutes on a motor scooter.”
There was a knock at the door. Ellis tensed.
“She drove fast,” Boris said. He opened the door. “Coffee,” he said disgustedly, and returned to his seat.
Two white-jacketed waiters wheeled a trolley into the room. They straightened up and turned around, each holding in his hand a Model “D” MAB pistol, standard issue for French detectives. One of them said: “Nobody move.”
Ellis felt Boris gather himself to spring. Why were there only two detectives? If Rahmi were to do something foolish, and get himself shot, it would create enough of a diversion for Pepe and Boris together to overpower the armed men—
The bedroom door flew open, and two more men in waiters’ uniforms stood there, armed like their colleagues.
Boris relaxed, and a look of resignation came over his face.
Ellis realized he had been holding his breath. He let it out in a long sigh.
It was all over.
A uniformed police officer walked into the room.
“A trap!” Rahmi burst out. “This is a trap!”
“Shut up,” said Boris, and once again his harsh voice silenced Rahmi. He addressed the police officer. “I object most strongly to this outrage,” he began. “Please take note that—”
The policeman punched him in the mouth with a leather-gloved fist.
Boris touched his lips, then looked at the smear of blood on his hand. His manner changed completely as he realized this was far too serious for him to bluff his way out. “Remember my face,” he told the police officer in a voice as cold as the grave. “You will see it again.”
“But who is the traitor?” cried Rahmi. “Who betrayed us?”
“Him,” said Boris, pointing at Ellis.
“Ellis?” Rahmi said incredulously.
“The phone call,” said Boris. “The address.”
Rahmi stared at Ellis. He looked wounded to the quick.
Several more uniformed policemen came in. The officer pointed at Pepe. “That’s Gozzi,” he said. Two policemen handcuffed Pepe and led him away. The officer looked at Boris. “Who are you?”
Boris looked bored. “My name is Jan Hocht,” he said. “I am a citizen of Argentina—”
“Don’t bother,” said the officer disgustedly. “Take him away.” He turned to Rahmi. “Well?”
“I have nothing to say!” Rahmi said, managing to make it sound heroic.
The officer gave a jerk of his head and Rahmi, too, was handcuffed. He glared at Ellis until he was led out.
The prisoners were taken down in the elevator one at a time. Pepe’s briefcase and the envelope full of hundred-franc notes were shrouded in polythene. A police photographer came in and set up his tripod.
The officer said to Ellis: “There is a black Citroën DS parked outside the hotel.” Hesitantly he added: “Sir.”
I’m back on the side of the law, Ellis thought. A pity Rahmi is so much more attractive a man than this cop.
He went down in the elevator. In the hotel lobby the manager, in black coat and striped trousers, stood with a pained expression frozen to his face as more policemen marched in.
Ellis went out into the sunshine. The black Citroën was on the other side of the street. There was a driver in the front and a passenger in the back. Ellis got into the back. The car pulled away fast.
The passenger turned to Ellis and said: “Hello, John.”
Ellis smiled. The use of his real name was strange after more than a year. He said: “How are you, Bill?”
“Relieved!” said Bill. “For thirteen months we hear nothing from you but demands for money. Then we get a peremptory phone call telling us we’ve got twenty-four hours to arrange a local arrest squad. Imagine what we had to do to persuade the French to do that without telling them why! The squad had to be ready in the vicinity of the Champs-Élysées, but to get the exact address we had to wait for a phone call from an unknown woman asking for Mustafa. And that’s all we know!”
“It was the only way,” Ellis said apologetically.
“Well, it took some doing—and I now owe some big favors in this town—but we did it. So tell me whether it was worth it. Who have we got in the bag?”
“The Russian is Boris,” said Ellis.
Bill’s face broke into a broad grin. “I’ll be a son of a bitch,” he said. “You brought in Boris. No kidding.”
“No kidding.”
“Jesus, I better get him back from the French before they figure out who he is.”
Ellis shrugged. “Nobody’s going to get much information out of him anyway. He’s the dedicated type. The important thing is that we’ve taken him out of circulation. It will take them a couple of years to break in a replacement and for the new Boris to build his contacts. Meanwhile we’ve really slowed their operation down.”
“You just bet we have. This is sensational.”
“The Corsican is Pepe Gozzi, a weapons dealer,” Ellis went on. “He supplied the hardware for just about every terrorist action in France in the last couple of years, and a lot more in other countries. He’s the one to interrogate. Send a French detective to talk to his father, Mémé Gozzi, in Marseilles. I predict you’ll find the old man never did like the idea of the family getting involved in political crimes. Offer him a deaclass="underline" immunity for Pepe if Pepe will testify against all the political people he sold stuff to—none of the ordinary criminals. Mémé will go for that, because it won’t count as betrayal of friends. And if Mémé goes for it, Pepe will do it. The French can prosecute for years.”