Out on the sidewalk, Formutesca permitted himself a nervous grin. “That last part was scary,” he said. “Being on my own with him.”
“It was worth it,” Parker told him.
7
They looked like small bowling pins with clock faces on their undersides. Parker held them both in his hands, looking at the clock faces, and said, “How accurate are they?”
“To the minute,” Gonor said, as proud of them as if he’d manufactured them himself. He pointed to one of the clocks. “You see, you set both those red hands, that one for the hour and that one for the minute. The black hands keep the time, and when they coincide with the red hands it goes off.”
They were in Gonor’s war room, their arsenal spread out on the table for Parker’s inspection. Pistols, machine guns, smoke bombs, gas bombs. Plus coils of rope, knives, rubber gloves, rolls of adhesive tape. And the two time bombs in Parker’s hands.
Parker said, “Good. We’ll go put them in place.” He turned to Manado and Formutesca standing to one side. “You two all set?”
Manado was obviously frightened with something more than stage fright, but it didn’t look as though it would immobilize him. He nodded jerkily, his eyes a little too wide. Formutesca, cocky now since his foray with Parker, grinned and said, “It’s in the bag.”
“It’s never in the bag,” Parker told him, “until afterwards.” He turned back to Gonor. “You ready?”
“Yes.” Gonor picked up two attaché cases from the floor and put them on the table. They were exactly alike, both black with brass locks. “This is yours,” Gonor said, pushing one of the cases toward Parker. “Do you want to take it now or come back for it?”
“I’ll take it now.”
Gonor opened the other attaché case and put the two time bombs in it. He shut it, then looked at the other case and questioningly at Parker. “Aren’t you going to count it?”
“It’s all there,” Parker said. “You ready?”
“Yes.”
Parker took his case and left the room, Gonor following him. The other two stayed behind.
Parker and Gonor walked through the apartment in silence, went out to the elevator, rode it down, went out to Fifth Avenue, and got themselves a cab heading downtown.
“Thirty-eighth Street between Park and Lexington,” Gonor said.
It was drizzling slightly, a cold March rain, the air full of clamminess. The cabby had a balled-up rag on the seat beside him, and every block or two he used it to clear condensation from the windshield. He had the wipers on slow, and they clicked back and forth with abrupt starts and slow sweeps across the glass.
They got out in front of the museum, knowing the Kasempas would be watching them from windows on the upper floors. But what would they see? Gonor, in the middle of the afternoon, unsuspectingly bringing another American scholar around to the museum.
Gonor unlocked the front door and led the way in. The air inside had the smell of an empty building, dry and chill and dusty. Shields hung on the walls in the foyer, and through doorways to the left and right Parker could see rows of glass-topped display cases. The wooden floor was highly polished and bare of rugs.
Gonor led the way: straight ahead and through a long narrow room with display cases on the left and wooden statuettes on pedestals on the right. At the far end was a doorway to a small square room with paintings on the side walls. Opposite was the elevator.
It was on the first floor now. They boarded, and as they rode up to three Parker checked the trapdoor in the ceiling. There was a small handle that had to be turned. Parker left it in the “open” position.
The elevator reached the third floor, and for the next ten minutes they looked at the exhibits there. They had no way of knowing if one of the Kasempa brothers was close enough to hear them, so they spoke seldom, and everything they did say they phrased as though Parker were a visiting professor from some college, here for research purposes.
When they went back down to the first floor, they kept up the act. In the half-hour they spent downstairs they set the two time bombs and planted them in places where they would be least likely to start fires. They were set to go off two minutes apart.
Finally, Parker said, “Thank you, Mr Gonor. It’s all been very helpful to me.”
“Thank you,” Gonor said. “I’m glad it has been.” He sounded exactly like a man trying not to show boredom.
They left the building together, Gonor carefully locking the front door, and walked up to Park Avenue, where Gonor waved and said, “There’s a cab.”
“I’ll take the next one,” Parker said.
Gonor looked at him in surprise. “Aren’t you coming back with me?”
“There’s no need to.”
“We’d assumed” Gonor was at a loss. “We thought you’d be coming back.”
“There’s nothing more to say,” Parker said. “They know what to do, they know how to do it.”
The cab Gonor had waved to was waiting beside them. “This is so abrupt,” he said.
“We’re finished,” Parker said. “All you have to remember for yourself is don’t leave the truck. And if something goes wrong and you have to start again, call me through Handy McKay.”
“All right,” said Gonor. “Well
thank you.”
“That’s all right,” Parker said. He saw another cab coming up Park, and he waved to it. “Good luck,” he said.
“Thank you.” Gonor suddenly stuck his hand out, as though breaking a promise to himself. “It’s been a pleasure,” he said.
Parker took his hand. “I hope you make out,” he said.
They got into their separate cabs. Parker said to the driver, “Winchester Hotel, West Forty-fourth Street.” Then he sat back and watched the world outside the cab window and stopped thinking about Gonor and the diamonds and the museum.
He thought about Claire. What name was she using? Mrs Carol Bowen. At Herridge House, in Boston. In the last few days, while working out the details of this one, he hadn’t thought of Claire at all, but suddenly his mind was full of her.
He could take the air shuttle; he could be with her in less than two hours.
At the hotel, he paused by the desk to tell them to get his bill ready. Then he went upstairs and into his room, and number one was there again, standing by the window watching the drizzle. The ex-colonist, the one who’d been going through Parker’s suitcase way back at the beginning of this.
His two friends weren’t around. In their place he held a Colt automatic casually in his right hand as though he knew how to use it but was sure it wouldn’t be necessary.
Parker said, “What now?”
“I thought we could have a talk,” he said.
Parker remembered the three names in Hoskins’ notebook. “Which one are you?” he said. “Daask?”
He seemed surprised. “You know the names? Oh, from Hoskins, of course. No, I’m Marten, Aaron Marten.”
“All right, Marten,” Parker said. “What do you want to talk about?”
“We could talk about Gonor,” Marten said. “When will the robbery take place? Where are the diamonds now? Where will he take them after the robbery?”
Parker shook his head. “You’ve got to know better,” he said.
Marten seemed unruffled. “You don’t want to talk about that? Very well. Would you care to talk about Mrs Carol Bowen instead? Who is no longer at Herridge House in Boston, Massachusetts?”
Three
1
Claire’s head hurt. That’s what woke her up, the pounding of it behind her forehead, up behind her eyes. A real killer of a headache, so that her first conscious thought was I must have drunk too much. But then through the pain came more consciousness, and awareness, and memory, and she thought, I didn’t drink anything yesterday. That made her open her eyes, and she saw she was in a place she’d never been before.