The twenty-dollar bill had been passed in a strip club, a small place just off Greek Street with seats for fifty, a tiny stage, and an enormous bar. Currently its name was "Nuderama." The man who had passed the bill had looked and talked like an American. He had used it to buy champagne for the three stars of the show, and it had cost him five pounds for a magnum. He'd given the barman ten shillings, kept thirty shillings in change, and had never gone back, though the stars looked for him daily. So did the barman. Millington thought he might be a man called Tony Driver, an unusually versatile crook who had done time in Great Britain and Canada for such varied offenses as blackmail, larceny, and the con game. Driver dressed well, lived anywhere, and played poker at least four hours a day. Usually he won. On the day before the bill had been passed, Driver had played for six hours and had lost five hundred pounds, Millington had learned. Then, apart from his one visit to Nuderama, he had disappeared for two days, come back with stake money, played poker again, and won. He handed Craig his photograph.
"You haven't tried to have him identified yet?" Craig asked.
"We were going to—until you came along. Now we've been asked to hold back."
"It's good of you to wait."
"It's orders," said Millington.
The van turned off Shaftesbury Avenue, along Old Compton Street and into Greek Street, then parked at a meter. It was three o'clock and Nuderama was preparing to face a new day. Craig took a pair of Zeiss glasses from a rack, gave another pair to Millington, looked at a yellow door framed in electric light bulbs, and around the light bulbs a wooden frame. At the top of the frame was the name "NUDERAMA" in rainbow lettering; the two sides sported pictures of girls. Mostly they were simply naked, except for that look of outraged hauteur—like a duchess whose bottom's being pinched by a servant—that strippers always wear when they pose. One or two wore muffs, or a pair of doves, or what Craig took to be a piece of salmon net. The most enterprising appeared about to administer the Irish whip to a gorilla.
As Craig watched, a man with the very white skin of one who rarely sees daylight went up to the doorway, opened it and went in. Craig took his photograph.
"That's the barman," said Millington.
He was followed by a chunky, bad-tempered woman—the cashier—and another man.
"That's the barker," said Millington. "He stands outside and cons in the customers."
Craig continued to take photographs.
A Bentley Continental whispered up to the curb and a tall, thin man got out. He was gray-haired, elegant, a white carnation in the buttonhole of his dark-blue suit. He limped slightly as he walked up to the doorway, and there was a smeared scar on one side of his face that suggested unsuccessful plastic surgery.
"That's the owner," said Millington. "Julek Brodski. He's a naturalized Pole."
"Any form?" asked Craig.
"No. He was a squadron leader in the Polish air force during the war. Got a D.S.O. Matter of fact, he's supposed to be a count or something. No, Brodski's all right," Millington said. He looked at a photo of a girl whose inability to handle a sunshade was causing her some embarrassment. "As a matter of fact he runs a nice, clean place."
"That the lot?" Craig asked, and Millington nodded. "What time do the girls arrive?"
"Four thirty," said Millington.
"Let's go and look at the place where Driver plays cards," said Craig.
Driver played in the basement of Luigi's, a sad, ineffective little cafe three blocks from the strip club. On the ground floor there was a soda fountain and seats that looked like the pews of the Methodist chapels Craig remembered from his boyhood. Three tired waitresses, who looked as if they hadn't left the building for weeks, shambled back and forth serving meals whose cheapness did nothing to compensate for their nastiness. Craig sat in the van and took more pictures—of the waitresses, of everybody who seemed at ease in the place, of a fat man who visited the cash register every half hour and rang up "NO CHANGE," then counted the take. The fat man was the proprietor. His name wasn't Luigi; it was Arthur. Fat Arthur. He was very fat indeed, but he didn't look soft. Downstairs was exactly the same, Craig learned, except that there was a little room behind the dining area, and in that room a poker game went on, sometimes for days. It was a quiet game, restricted to friends of Arthur's, dishonest men who kept their dishonesty to themselves. The police weren't interested. Millington suddenly looked restless.
"What's wrong?" Craig asked.
Millington flushed. "I drank too much beer," he said.
"The loo's in that cupboard," said Craig, and pointed.
Millington, half-believing, opened the cupboard door. It was true.
"You think of everything," he said.
"We try," said Craig. "We have to, in our business."
He looked again into the street as Millington voided his bladder.
"Come here," he said, and began taking pictures.
"I can't," said Millington.
Craig took more pictures, and at last Millington came over to him and looked out of the window at a tall young man in a Brooks Brothers gray-flannel suit, knitted silk tie, and button-down collar.
"That's Driver," said Millington.
Craig looked down at Millington's unzipped fly.
"You do pick your times, don't you?" he said.
The van drove off at last, and Craig set up the developing tank inside it, curtained it off, and switched on the infrared lights. The photographs came out well enough, even the photographs of photographs of the stars of Nuderama, Karen and Tempest and Maxine. Craig numbered each picture and took notes on the names as Millington talked. For the first time Millington became aware of Craig's fury of concentration, his utter disregard of everything but the job on hand. Millington began to wonder what a man had to do to afford a fifty-guinea suit, a Longines-Wittnauer watch, Guerlain cologne. He looked for the hundredth time at Craig's hands. They were big hands, for Craig himself was big—six feet two and thirteen stones at least, with a heaviness of shoulder that stretched his suit glove-tight across the back—but they were neat hands too, long-fingered, deft in their movements. The knuckles were strange: each was flattened, so that across the back of each hand there was a continuous ridge of bone, and the skin that covered it looked like leather. The edge of each hand was odd too, because it was not rounded but straight and flat, and covered from wrist to fingertip in the same leathery skin. It reminded Millington of the blade of an ax.
The van pulled over to the curb by a tube station, and Craig finished his notes.
"All right," he said. "This is where you leave us."
"What are you going to do now?" Millington asked. "Can you tell me?"
"I'm going back there," said Craig. "Our people see this as a rush job. So I'll rush it." He grinned. "That's where I've got the edge on you. I can go in there and make things happen. You have to wait and pick up the pieces."
"I have to go back there myself," said Mill-ington. "Not after Driver," he added hastily. "We're laying off him till we get clearance from you. But I may see you."
"You won't know me," said Craig.
"Naturally not," Millington stood up, and surprised himself by holding out his hand.
"Good luck," he said.
"You too," said Craig^ and shook his hand.
Millington said: "Yes, well—" and scrambled out of the van. A moment later his head reappeared in the doorway.
"You're parked on a yellow line," he said.
5
The room was bare, efficient, and utterly devoid of decoration. On one cream-washed wall a darker patch showed where a picture had once hung. It had been a portrait of Stalin. Chelichev was glad that such extravagant idolatry was no longer necessary. It was idiotic, and it interfered with the clean lines of his room. So did the dark patch, but he refused to have it painted out. It reminded him of days that had not been gone for very long, days that might, if one was not careful, come back. He settled back in his chair; he looked like an ad for superior whisky, a lean, leathery, handsome horseman; a tough and well-preserved Fifty who could still play hell with the ladies. His Soviet army general's uniform had been cut and tailored by an expert. It, like everything else in the room, was fanatically clean, as if room and owner had been purged by fire. He looked at the one note on his desk, tore it into four neat squares, murmured into a desk phone, then sat back, at once at ease and watchful, as a cat sits.