Actually, Gibraltar was ideal from his own point of view; from the Rock it would be no great problem to get it onto a ferry to Spanish Morocco. A few pesetas bought a lot of closed eyes and turned heads in that part of the world. And in Morocco it should be simple to make a very lucrative deal for the stuff. He returned his attention to the telephone and the waiting Max.
“Where did Huuygens go when he left the airline office?”
“I don’t know. I imagine Willi took over and picked him up,” Max said. “I couldn’t walk out of the airline office behind the subject after standing in line so long; it would have looked suspicious. I had to stay and ask the girl a lot of stupid questions” — Schneller raised his eyes to the ceiling — “but Willi and Herr Gerhardt himself were right behind us, so I’m sure they picked the subject up. That was the arrangement. They should be calling you as soon as—”
“All right! All right!” Schneller brought his eyes down, glaring. God, what a talkative idiot! “Go back to the hotel and be prepared to help the others when they get back. If they need you.” He was paying good money for this donkey?
“Yes, sir.”
“And good-bye!”
“Yes, sir,” Max said sadly and hung up, reluctant to stop talking. The reporting was the part of detective work he liked best.
The big blond man set the telephone back in its cradle and pulled his tobacco and papers from his pocket, beginning to roll a cigarette without conscious thought, forcing his mind from the irritation of Max Gross. So Huuygens would arrive at North Front in Gibraltar around midnight three days hence. Friday. The question of why the delay in Buenos Aires an extra day when he had a job to do was a bit irksome but really not essential. Probably his plan for getting through customs in Gibraltar required his arrival there on Friday, rather than earlier. That must be it. In any event, it was nothing to worry about.
Friday... More than ample time to get someone from Germany down there. Or, better yet, to arrange for two men; one to join the flight at Gatwick in London and actually accompany Huuygens and the other to be waiting in Gibraltar. It would be pretty hard for even the clever M’sieu Huuygens to give the slip to the two of them — not the two men he intended to hire for the job. And they would hold him someplace privately until he could get there and handle the rest himself. It would be necessary to get rid of M’sieu Huuygens, but that would occasion no great sadness on his part; it would be, in fact, a job he would handle himself with great pleasure. He pictured the stocky man’s neck between his strong fingers, allowed four or five seconds in his mind for slowly increasing pressure — long enough to remind the man behind those bulging gray eyes that it did not pay to get cute with Hans Schneller — and then suddenly flexed his thick thumbs, completing the garroting. He could almost hear the neck snap.
He tugged at the knuckles of his fingers as if in relief after the strangling he had just imagined; then his smile faded. Imagination was one thing, but facts were another. Between the expenses involved in the hiring of the Gerhardt Detective Agency with half their men, plus the two from Berlin — who did not work cheaply — the cost of this hijacking would be considerable. Not that it wasn’t worth it— Worth it? Ten thousand times over — but, still, money didn’t grow on trees. True, he had had the suitcase in his hands after Sanchez had been and gone with the combination — and maybe he shouldn’t have given him the combination either, but that was water over the dam — and possibly he should have just gone off with it. But no; Sanchez or that partner of his would have had him followed for the rest of his life, which probably wouldn’t have been long, and who needed it when a simpler solution was at hand? This was much better — let the blame fall on Huuygens. In fact, make sure the blame falls on him. No suitcase, no Huuygens. He could even go to Barcelona and commiserate with the others on the loss...
His smile returned. He stretched his hand to place his call to Berlin; the telephone rang as his fingers touched the smooth plastic. He brought the receiver to his ear in the same easy motion.
“Yes?”
“Schneller? This is Gerhardt. What’s the matter with your telephone? I’ve been ringing every few minutes and it’s been busy.”
“You’ve got a talkative operative named Max Something on your payroll. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing’s the matter. You wanted reports, didn’t you? You scream enough about how much they cost, so I thought you’d be interested in getting one, that’s all.”
Now that Huuygens’ itinerary was in his hands, it was far less important to have the man constantly followed; still, it certainly did no harm, and he had promised Gerhardt at least two days’ employment for at least four men. A pity, under the circumstances, but he could not back out now; Gerhardt was an old friend. Still, as Gerhardt said, they were costing him so he might as well get the reports. No sense in throwing away the money.
“All right,” Schneller said mildly. “So report.”
“All right,” Gerhardt said, still not completely mollified. “My man Willi picked up your man outside the British United Airways office on Maipú. Max was inside with him. He—”
“I know,” Schneller said and finally lit his cigarette. He coughed once and started to subside when another fit caught him. He managed to control it at last, speaking with effort. “He was picking up his tickets there—”
“His tickets?” At the other end of the line Gerhardt shook his head disgustedly at the phone. Why did every client try to second-guess the agency? “Tickets nothing. They must have been booked solid, because from British United he went around the corner on Córdoba to Air France—”
Schneller felt a cold hand grip his stomach and twist. The match in his fingers burned down to his hand; he woke up with a muffled curse and dropped it on the rug, stamping it out.
“—and Willi was right behind him. Your man bought a ticket for Paris — Orly Field. His flight leaves Ezeiza at eighteen hours on Thursday, day after tomorrow, and gets into Orly at fourteen fifty-five on Friday, their time.”
Schneller took a shuddering breath, coughed on his cigarette, and took it from his lip, crushing it out viciously. He felt as if he had been betrayed. Betrayed? He felt as if he had been clubbed on the back of his bull neck. Why in the devil would Huuygens — Or did that dumbhead Max make a mistake? But, no — his information had been too complete. Then, what in the name of—
One possibility suddenly occurred to him, the only one that made sense at the moment. The tickets had to be for different people. Of course! Huuygens had an accomplice, a confederate. And they would meet someplace, which is why he had booked flights leaving at approximately the same hour. And why he booked on Thursday; it was probably the only day both airlines had flights that stopped at the same place. Rio, possibly, or Las Palmas... He began to feel better.
“What stopovers does it have?”
“Two,” Gerhardt said. “Brasília and Dakar.”
Schneller felt bad again. There was, of course, the possibility that Huuygens and his confederate planned to meet halfway from their destination — halfway between what? London and Paris? In the Channel? That way lay madness... Then—? The shock had not worn off, it had merely been put aside temporarily. His mind was beginning to function again.
“And from Paris where is he booked?”