“Okay,” I said. “I think I have the picture. Thanks a lot.”
“Any time,” he assured me. “And when you come out with a new series or a movie or whatever you’re doing, be sure to tell Morton, so he can alert me.”
“I definitely will,” I promised, and hung up, and said to Morton, “A nice fellow.”
He nodded. “Why,” he asked me, “don’t you want to tell me the reason for your interest?”
I looked at my watch. “My driver will be here in fifty minutes,” I said.
He sighed, shook his head, got to his feet, then paused to frown at me again. “Just promise me one thing,” he said.
“If I can.”
“That it isn’t love,” he said. “Promise me you aren’t considering running off with this Minister of Justice’s daughter or some such thing.”
Laughing in surprise, I said, “That much I can promise. And now, come on, I need that drink. I just found out my lawyer is a romantic.”
30
A nice young girl in the airline’s blazer was about to preboard me, when my name was paged on the public address system. “Pick up the white courtesy telephone, please.” I said to the airline girl, “That’s me. Where’s the white courtesy telephone?”
“Over here.”
It was behind the check-in station, mounted on the wall next to a fire extinguisher in a little niche behind glass. I picked it up, listened to buzzing and a click, and then a female voice said, “May I help you?”
“I think so,” I said. “I’m Sam Holt, you just paged me.
“One moment, please.”
I waited. Beside me, the airline girl’s smile was losing some of its crease; she looked at her watch, then pretended she hadn’t. So far I was still a preboarder, and the regular boarding was being held up.
The same voice came back. “There’s a phone call for you from Los Angeles. The gentleman is named Ross Ferguson. Will you talk with him?”
Ross? What was so urgent? What was happening? “Yes, I will,” I said.
“Hold on, please, we’ll switch him. If nothing happens in a minute or two, hang up, and we’ll call you back at that station when we’ve reconnected.”
How perilous she made it all sound. “That’s what I’ll do,” I agreed, and there was a click and silence. I turned to the airline girl, saying, “This is a phone call from L.A. Maybe you shouldn’t wait for me.”
Which gave her an opportunity to look overtly at her watch. “No, that’s fine, Mr. Holt,” she said. “We still have plenty of time. When your call is done—”
Ross’s voice said in my ear, “Hello? Sam?”
“I’ll be over there by the door.”
“Fine. Thanks.” The girl walked away, and I said into the phone, “Ross? What’s up?”
“Listen, Sam,” he said. He sounded tense but zapped up, convincing himself he was on top of things. What he was on top of, in fact, was the tiger. He said, “There’s a question here.”
“Yeah?” His friends had a question, was that what he meant?
He said, “When you flew back there yesterday, uh, who was in the seat beside you?”
“Why?”
“Sam, do you mind? Is it a big secret, for Christ’s sake?”
His control was beginning to crack. “I’m wondering the same thing myself,” I told him. “He said his name was Hassan Tabari, and he’s supposed to be Minister of Justice in someplace called Dharak.”
“How come he was in that seat?”
“Why don’t you ask your pals? I think the thing was a set-up, but I don’t know what the hell for.”
“What did you talk about?”
“Not much, that’s why I can’t figure out why he wanted to be there. He mostly read magazines, did the whole puzzle in The Atlantic. He told me he’d been talking with the L.A. police about a couple of his countrymen — what would they be, Dharakians?”
“Who gives a shit, Sam? What about them?”
“He said they’d been charged with bank robbery in L.A., and the reason he went out there was to find out if it connected with anything at home. He said it didn’t. And he was coming to New York to talk with his guy at the U.N., I don’t know about what.”
“Why do you say it was a set-up?”
“They preboarded me. In fact, Ross, these people here would very much like to preboard me now, so if you could figure out why you’re calling, I’d appreciate it. Anyway, they preboarded me, and he was already there, ahead of everybody. When it turned out he was an Arab from some dinky little Gulf state, I figured it had to be connected with your buddies somehow. Why, what’s happening? A falling out among the troops?”
“Sam, you just don’t know the situation here.”
“That’s true. I wish I did know it. Is there anything else?”
“Hold on.”
The lion tamer went off to get instructions from his lions. I smiled across at the airline girl, giving her an encouraging nod and holding up one finger: just one minute more. She smiled back, also nodding, letting me know everything was just fine and she’d really appreciate it if I’d get my ass in gear.
“Thanks, Sam.” Ross again. “Have a nice flight.”
“You too,” I said, but he was gone.
31
Who was Tabari? I brooded that question most of the flight back. I had no seatmate at all this time, so I sprawled my legs over the entire area, ignored the movie, picked at the lunch, drank a lot of club soda, and tried to fit Tabari into the picture.
Ross had told me the Barq people represented a Middle East nation, that they were there in his house because it would give them access to a place where a person would be that they meant to kidnap and take back home for a show trial. Maybe that was the truth, or maybe Ross just thought it was the truth, or maybe Ross was lying to me and the scheme was something else entirely. But if it were true, would the Middle East nation be Dharak? And was Tabari a part of the scheme, or was he allied with the person they meant to kidnap? A Minister of Justice would be very involved in a major political show trial.
But would a “moderate” nation engage in murder quite as casually as these people? Even if in many ways Dharak was a backward and brutal country, the description Morton’s friend had given me just didn’t fit the style of Ross’s companions.
So maybe the person to be kidnapped was from Dharak, but the kidnappers were from a different, wilder place, fundamentalists planning to put a moderate on trial in a public way. Judging by that strange phone call just now from Ross, Tabari wasn’t an ally of those people after all; it seemed as though it worried them that I’d been talking with the man. So maybe he was on the good guys’ side, if there was a good guys’ side. Or maybe I didn’t know enough of the story to figure out good guys from bad. Can’t tell the players without a program.
All I accomplished, finally, in the five-hour flight, was to muddle my brain entirely, so that I was glad when it was over and I walked out to three P.M. California sunlight, the topcoat from Anita’s place over my arm, the attaché case in my other hand. At the end of the ramp down which the passengers were shunted were several chauffeurs and messengers holding up pieces of paper or cardboard with handwritten names; among them stood a tall, light-toned young black man in tan suit and yellow shirt and brownish figured tie, showing a piece of letterhead stationery with the word Holt written on it. I went over to him, saw that the letterhead was from CNA, and said, “I’m Sam Holt.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, grinning, happy with life. “I recognized you. I’m Toby Packer from the agency, I have your car.”