I surely did, even if he didn’t The implications of what Dietrich had just told were tremendous. Thoughts churned around like wreckage in a typhoon. I couldn’t believe that Dietrich was unaware of what he’d said.
We returned to the living room, Dietrich pacing back and forth as if the energy in him had to find some release other than in words. I was silent because I wanted to sort out the thoughts in my mind.
“I can make it anywhere. The heroin that I tried to plant in your room? Did you think I smuggled that much heroin into Mexico? I didn’t have to. I can make it here as easily as I made it in France when I planted it on those Frenchmen. I made it in New York. I made it in Miami.”
Susan sat down on the couch. I watched Dietrich stride back and forth in the confines of the living room and knew that the man was not completely in his right mind.
“Mr. Dietrich.” I caught his attention.
“Yes?”
“You asked me before if I know what your discovery means? Do you?”
Dietrich turned to face me, puzzled.
“Are you aware of how valuable your discovery is to the very men you’re trying to destroy? Do you know the risks they now take to smuggle narcotics into the States? Or how many millions of dollars in cash they must pay for it? They do it for only one reason. The fantastic profit involved. Hundreds of millions a year. Now you’ve found a way that will eliminate the risk of smuggling narcotics into the States as well as giving them larger profits than they could have dreamed of. Don’t you know what your formula is worth to them?”
Dietrich stared uncomprehendingly at me.
“There isn’t one of these men who wouldn’t commit a dozen murders to lay his hands on your formula. Or on you, for that matter.”
He stopped almost in mid-stride, his face stricken with a look of sudden fright.
“I–I never… I never thought about it,” he stammered.
“Damnit, think about it!” I’d finally gotten through to him. There wasn’t any need to say more.
The old man went over to the couch and sank down beside his daughter, putting his face in his hands. Susan put her arm around this thin shoulders to comfort him. She looked across the room at me with pale gray eyes.
“Will you help us, Mr. Stephans?”
“The best thing you can do now is to go back home and keep your mouths shut. Never mention a word to anyone.”
“There’s no one else to help us,” she said. “Please?”
I looked at them, father and daughter, trapped in a web of revenge. My duty was to Gregorius and in order to help him I had to keep my promise to Stocelli, to clear him with the Commission. All I’d have to do would be to turn these two over to him, but the thought of what Stocelli would do if he got his hands on Dietrich was sickening. And if I turned Dietrich over to Stocelli, it would be the same as handing him Dietrich’s formula. Within a year, Stocelli would control the entire narcotics rackets in the States. No big-time operator would be able to compete with him. With the risk of smuggling heroin into the States eliminated, and with the incredible profits to be had because of its low manufacturing costs, it would be no time at all before Stocelli would be supplying every narcotics ring in every city in the country. There’d be no way to stop him. Giving Dietrich to Stocelli would be like turning a plague loose on the country.
I knew I had to keep Dietrich’s formula out of Stocelli’s grasp. And since it was locked up in the old man’s mind, I had to get the pair of them out of Mexico.
“All right,” I said. “But you must do exactly what I tell you to.”
“We will.”
“How much heroin do you have in there?” I asked Dietrich.
Dietrich looked up. “Almost forty kilos in crystal form.”
“Get rid of it And anything else you’ve been brewing, too. Get rid of all the glassware. You can’t take a chance that it’ll be seen by a maid or bellhop. Clean the place up thoroughly.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes. Tomorrow, I want you to book your return flight to the States on the first plane out.”
“And then?”
“For the time being, nothing. That’s all you can do.”
I suddenly felt exhausted. My arm ached with a dull, throbbing pain. I needed rest and sleep.
“What about Stocelli?” asked Dietrich, the fanatical light in his eyes flaring up once more. “What about him? Does he get off scot-free? Does this mean he’ll not be punished?”
“HI take care of Stocelli. You have my word for that.”
“Can I believe you?”
“You’ll have to.”
I rose to my feet and told them that I was tired and that I was leaving, and I walked out the door, shutting it carefully behind me. None of us said anything as I left. There was no more to be said.
When I left Dietrich and his daughter, it was well past four in the morning, but I still had one final chore to do before I could go to sleep. I went back to my room to pick up two tape recorders — a pocket recorder and a slightly larger one. The larger recorder had been fitted with a high-speed playback. It could play back a full hour of tape in less than thirty seconds. To anyone listening, the sound it made would be nothing more than a high-pitched whine.
With both machines, I went down to the deserted lobby and settled myself in one of the telephone booths. Pretending to be speaking into the mouthpiece, I dictated a report of my activities into the small pocket recorder. I covered almost all the events that had occurred, except for the killing of Luis Aparicio. It took me almost fifteen minutes before I was through talking.
Then I got through to Denver.
“You sound tired,” Denver said when he came on the line.
“I am,” I said, tartly, “so let’s get this over with, okay?”
“I’m taping now.”
“High speed,” I said, wearily. “Let’s not take all night.”
“Roger. Ready for reception.”
“Okay, this is private. For playback to Gregorius only. Repeat — for Gregorius only.”
I put the tape cassette into the high-speed player and held it to the mouthpiece of the telephone. I pressed the ‘play’ button, and the machine gave off a whine like the shrill scream of a distant buzz-saw. The sound lasted for seven or eight seconds, then stopped abruptly.
I put the handset to my ear and said, “How was the reception?”
“The scopes say it was okay,” Denver acknowledged.
“All right,” I said. “I want that tape destroyed immediately after transmission to Gregorius.”
“Will do. Anything else?”
“No,” I said. “I guess that’s all for now.”
I hung up. Before I left the booth, I rewound the original cassette, disconnected the microphone, and ran it in the ‘record’ mode in the high speed recorder until the tape was completely erased.
Back in my room, I had to pull the drapes against the glare of the coming dawn. I undressed and got into bed and lay thinking for a long while because my thoughts were on the last part of the message I had sent to Gregorius:
“What Dietrich has discovered is so dangerous that it cannot be entrusted to him. The man is highly neurotic and unstable. If his formula for synthetic heroin ever gets into the wrong hands, I’d hate to think of the consequences. Objectively, I would recommend that he be eliminated — as soon as possible.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I slept until the late afternoon, when an hysterical and terrified Susan aroused me by her frantic pounding on my door.