“The exits are covered, right?”
She nodded. “Every one of them.”
“With orders to shoot to kill?”
“They’re on the rooftops,” she said, her eyes betraying her concern. “They have rifles with silencers, and they’re all excellent marksmen.”
I took her by the arm as we walked down the red-carpeted outside stairs under the pale green canopy.
“You’ve convinced me,” I told her jauntily. I didn’t know whether she was lying to me, but in view of the fact that they’d found me within half an hour of my leaving the hotel, I was certain that there were enough of them around to cover the few exits from Bonwit’s. And, in view of the previous attacks on my life, if Sabrina said they were prepared to kill me, I had to believe her.
Besides, wasn’t this what I’d wanted all along? To meet the higher-ups?
The taxi took us into the heart of the Boston financial district: Water Street, Congress Street, Battery-march, Chatham and High Streets. Some of the buildings are new and tall and modern. Others are almost as old as the city itself. It was to one of the new buildings on one of the old streets that Sabrina took me.
We went up more than twenty stories and along a corridor to a door that bore no name. For that matter, none of the doors along that corridor were marked.
Without bothering to knock, Sabrina opened the door. There was no receptionist on the other side. The door led directly into a handsome, mahogany-paneled office. Richly carpeted, discreetly draped, illuminated by shaded lamps, the office was the kind you see pictures of in slick financial magazines like Fortune and Forbes.
The man behind the massive desk in the center of the room looked as if he belonged there. A rich, successful young executive type, he was dressed expensively in a conservatively-cut gray suit. He gestured at the chair next to his desk.
“Sit down, please.” He was coldly polite. He looked at Sabrina.
“I assume you’ve told him that it will do him no good to be violent with me?” he asked her.
“I don’t have to,” Sabrina answered. “I think he knows.”
“He hasn’t acted that way up to now.”
“I do tend to get violent when someone’s trying to do away with me,” I said coolly.
He turned to me for the first time. His face was smooth and emotionless. His eyes gazed blankly at me as if they were more used to looking at numbers, percentages, cost-efficiency ratios and returns on dollar investment figures. I had the feeling that he really didn’t like to deal with human beings.
“I have no intentions of trying to do away with you,” he said.
“Then you’re safe.”
He turned to Sabrina. “I think you can leave.” He dismissed her as if she were a parlor maid. Sabrina touched me on the shoulder as she walked toward the door.
“Don’t do anything rash,” she said. “No matter what you think, the organization’s too big for you. Believe me.”
Then she was gone. I settled back in the chair and took out one of my gold-tipped cigarettes. He pushed an ashtray closer to me. There wasn’t a speck of dust on it. Pure Tiffany crystal.
“Go ahead,” I said, lighting my cigarette with an air of indifference. “What’s this all about?”
“You’ve been a nuisance to us,” he said as if he were stating an obvious but objective fact, like announcing that it was now the daytime and the sun was shining.
“I suppose I have been,” I answered.
“We don’t like it.”
“I didn’t think you would. Who’s ‘we’?”
He ignored my question and went on as if it were a speech he’d rehearsed and had to get out without interruption.
“You could be taken care of,” he continued, “but we’d rather not go to all that trouble. It’s worth it to us to let you live if you’ll cooperate.”
I cocked my head and decided not to interrupt. I didn’t think it would do any good anyhow.
“In return for your cooperation,” he said, “we are prepared to deposit a large sum into a bank account—”
“Swiss?” I couldn’t help throwing it in.
“—in a Zurich bank in your name, or number, whichever you prefer. The amount is quite large, I assure you.”
“What kind of cooperation are you talking about?”
“Leave,” he said. “Just go away, anywhere, for the next two weeks.”
“After that, it won’t matter,” I said. “Right?”
“Exactly.”
“How large an amount are we talking about?”
“Name it.” He was happy now that we were talking figures.
“A million?”
He nodded his head, not in the least perturbed by the size of my request. “In dollars,” he said. “That’s quite acceptable to us.”
I held up my hand. “Wait a minute. I didn’t say I’d take it. I just pulled a sum out of the air.”
His face flushed a deep scarlet. “We are not joking, Mr. Carter! Please be serious!”
“Alright, then,” I said. “Let’s try five million” — he started to nod, but I kept on — “and if you agree to that, I’ll go up to ten million.”
His hands had clenched into fists, but he forced himself to keep his voice even.
“Are you playing games?” he asked.
I nodded. “That’s right. With play money. Because if your plan comes off, that money won’t be worth a dime in a couple of months! Ten million, twenty million — hell, make it thirty million! If you pay me off in American dollars, in three months’ time none of it will be worth the paper it’s printed on!”
He leaned back in his big leather swivel chair, eyeing me with more respect than he’d shown since I came in.
“Well,” he said. “Well!”
I got to my feet. “You’ve found out what you wanted to know,” I told him. “Go tell your boss my answer is ‘no’.”
Carefully he asked, “How do you know what I wanted to find out, Mr. Carter?”
“Your bribe attempt was a ploy — a cover-up. Your people weren’t really sure that the Russian told me everything.” I leaned across the desk and spoke in a low, menacing voice. “You tell them that he told me everything! Got it? Everything he knew!”
He said, “I’m afraid we shall have to use more extreme measures in your case, Mr. Carter.”
“You’ve already tried that,” I told him coldly. “Now, you take this back to whoever sent you. Just tell him that I said, don’t try to step on me!”
He suddenly went pale.
“What did you say?”
“I’ll put it another way. Don’t tread on me!”
It was as if I’d physically assaulted him. His face went tight with shock. All of a sudden his neat little world was collapsing around him in confusion. I could almost look into his mind and see its fanatical orderliness being replaced by chaos. That one phrase blew his universe apart.
I walked over to the door. Then I turned and came back again. I’d almost done a very stupid thing. I realized that he must have some kind of prearranged signal to indicate whether I’d gone along with the bribe attempt. If so, they’d let me leave the building alive.
If not, I wouldn’t get halfway across the street without being gunned down, blown up or run over!
He looked up at me fearfully as I came around the big mahogany desk, and he started to get up out of his chair. He sat down abruptly when I shoved Hugo’s sharp little blade up against his throat.
It’s a strange thing about knives. They’re the most terrifying of weapons. Somehow a gun doesn’t carry so intense and immediate a threat. It’s more impersonal, more abstract. We don’t really react to a gun with the panic we feel about sharp steel. There isn’t that gut-wrenching paralysis that makes a man feel naked and helpless.
The executive tried to talk with vocal cords that were in a state of revolt. Muffled, incoherent sounds came out of his mouth, more like moans than words. I pulled him close to me.