"Craig got to Marcus Kaplan." The chubby man looked up, surprised. "He took the girl with him. Miriam Loman. They met at some skeet club Kaplan uses. It seems likely that Kaplan told Craig all he wanted to know."
Mankowitz sucked on his cigar like a fat child with a lollipop.
"You gave us the wrong advice," Lederer said. Man-kowitz pouted.
"I didn't give you any advice," he said. "I gave you facts. Craig as an agent was finished. That was a fact. He's too scared of pain. That was a fact. He'd lost his drive— another fact. And the way Fisher was handled threw him —also a fact."
"In Miami he put through a nice, smooth operation. He wasn't scared and he didn't panic."
"Then something's happened to him," Mankowitz said.
"What?"
The fat man's shoulders heaved in a comprehensive shrug.
"How do I know? For that sort of guessing I need a crystal ball."
"I'd be obliged if you'd use it," said Lederer, and Mankowitz pouted again.
"I can tell you a possibility," he said. "But that's all it is."
"Tell me a possibility."
"Somewhere Craig's got the idea that he's got nothing else to lose. He's so far down he can only go out—or up. Craig isn't the type to go out. So he's started to hit back."
"But you saw him a couple of days ago. What could have happened since then?"
"He went back to London," the fat man said. "It's possible he saw Loomis."
"Inevitable," Lederer said.
"Maybe Loomis rejected him. The archetypal father-figure rejected him. That means he's absolutely alone." "Except for the girl."
"The girl is expendable. For Craig, now, everyone may be expendable. And he is expendable to everyone. Hence his need for a hostage. Nobody loves him any more."
"That's why I let him take the girl," Lederer said. "The way he is now, he might just do the job for us."
"You can keep track of him?"
"Oh yes. He's booked through to Rome. He stops over at the Azores. If he makes Rome, he goes on to Turkey. We've got plenty of chances to pull Loman out if we have to."
as
"It might be wiser not to take them," Mankowitz said. "If Craig's recovered his skill as a result of—whatever has happened, he'll need the Loman girl to find Aaron Kaplan. Then we can take over."
"Not in Turkey. Turkey's a little difficult for us at the moment."
"Then get him out of Turkey. Surely there are ways?"
Lederer thought for a moment, watching the thick coil of cigar smoke plume into nothingness as the air conditioning got it.
"There's a man called Royce and a girl called Benson. They're after Kaplan too. Craig won't want to meet them. Perhaps we could use that. I'd like to. It would make the whole thing so much neater."
"It would make Loomis mad too."
Lederer smiled. "There's that also, of course. And when Loomis is angry he's at his most vulnerable. Yes. That's the way we'll play it."
One of Lederer's phones rang. He had three on his desk and one on a side table, an old-fashioned piece of ivory, inlaid with gilt, that belonged to Paris in the naughtiest nineties. Most people thought of it as decoration, but it worked, though its number was unlisted. He walked to it now, and picked it up.
"Yes?" he said. The phone squawked briskly, then went dead. He hung up and turned to Mankowitz.
"Craig's recovered remarkably," he said. "Yesterday he clobbered a CIA man."
The journey was a grueling one, and by the end of it the yellow Orion dress had lost its glitter. Beside her, Craig looked as indestructible as ever, in his crumpled suit, the shirt that had stopped being white the day before. Rome was behind them now, and they were on an Al Italia Caravelle, headed for Istanbul. She had a confused memory of meals that were always breakfast, of sound systems that shouted first in Portuguese, or Spanish, or Italian, then in English; of uneasy sleep and only half-awake wakefulness as one plane or another screamed across the Atlantic, Spain, the Mediterranean, Italy, and now the
Middle East. All the way he had been kind to her, considerate for her comfort, easing the strain of travel that seemed to touch him not at all, so that in the end she had slept against him, her head resting on the hard muscle of his shoulder, and he had sat unmoving, hour after hour. Once she had awakened, and found him looking down at her. There had, she thought, been a kind of pity in his face, but it had disappeared at once, the blank mask taking its place as he settled her down again, put his arm across her shoulders, the most impersonal arm she had ever felt. It was there now as the plane strung islands like jewels below them: Limnos, Imroz, Samothraki, before the long ride down to Gallipoli, Marmara, Istanbul. He shook out one of his rare cigarettes and lit it left handed.
"Are we nearly there?" she asked.
"Soon," said Craig.
"Boy, could I use a shower," she said. The arm quivered, she looked up and saw that he was laughing. "What did I say?" she asked.
"Miss Loman, Miss Loman, how American you are."
"Well of course I'm American," she said, "and anyway, I wish you'd stop calling me Miss Loman."
"Never spoil a professional relationship for the sake of a little politeness," said Craig.
She looked up at him, but his face as usual told her nothing. He concentrated on the pleasure the cigarette gave him.
"Professional relationship?"
"We're colleagues," he said. "We may not want to be, but we are."
The no smoking sign came on then, and it was time to fasten seat belts.
The customs, she thought, were disappointed in them. They carried so little luggage, but currency control cheered up appreciably when they saw the dollars he carried. They walked through the bright impersonality of the arrival lounge, and already she felt bewilderment, even resentment. The Middle East resembled the Middle West far too much. He guided her out to a clouded sunlight that added to her resentment—they had better weather in Chicago—and took her to a long line of taxi cabs. This too was Middle Western, but twenty years too late. An unending line of museum pieces: Fords, Chewies, Oldsmobiles, even a salmon-pink Cadillac that reminded her of the pictures Marcus had in his album; the kind of cars they made when Detroit started rolling again, just after the war, before she was a year old, battered now, their paint peeling, the shark's grin of chromium turned yellow, or nonexistent, but as American, she thought bitterly, as Mom's apple pie. Only the drivers were different, but there the difference was so marked it almost compensated for the rest. Miriam had never seen taxi drivers before who promised so much in so many different languages.
Craig let his glance move across them, taking his time. To her they all seemed alike, swarthy, noisy, not very clean, but Craig found one at least who was different, and walked toward him, a tubby and excitable man with an ancient Packard that smelled of nothing more terrible than coarse soap, recently used. Craig spoke to him in a language she didn't recognize, but which she presumed to be Turkish, and the taxi driver grinned and answered him in a speech that lasted until they drove away from the cab rank and were on the highway to the city. From time to time Craig butted in for a word or two, and once they both exploded with laughter, then the driver gave up at last and concentrated on passing everything else on the road. As he did so, he twiddled with the radio, and station after station wailed out the music of the Middle East. For some reason this annoyed the driver, who twiddled even harder, but the radio was obstinate.