I scowled up at him. “And do you need me? I gather I’m not really wanted back in Washington right now? Do I detect that delicate little wisp of a nuance? Ah, good. If I’m not wanted in D.C., I want to see what I can find out about this business. The Israelis are still at large, for one thing.”
He chewed on his overhanging upper lip. “Mmmm... yes, perhaps. Perhaps...”
“There’s not much I can do about the General’s end of this matter that you guys can’t do better in the clear. But, working under cover, I might be able to find out something about this other group. I think I’ll muck about in that area and see what turns up.”
“Yes,” he said at last. “Yes, I think that might be best after all, in spite of everything.” Thanks, I thought. Thanks loads. “One does hate a lot of wild cards in the deck. These new factors make things a little messier than one might wish. We don’t know, for instance, that the Israelis don’t have a lead on the new wherabouts of the shipment. We can assume that, but we don’t know for sure. You could find out for us?” Just like that, moving me about like a damned pawn. Well, I’d fool the hell out of him.
That was that, though: he’d dismissed me, and was heading for the door. The one afterthought he allowed me was to turn and remind me to call in daily.
I scowled. “Oh, by the way,” I said. “If you’re going anywhere over water, you might drop this in.” I handed him a not very neat, fairly heavy package wrapped in a hanky. “And it wouldn’t do to go waving it about on the way there.”
He gave me a cold glare. “What’s this? I...”
“The murder weapon,” I said. “The one I shot the General with.”
After he’d gone I finished my scotch and sat there thinking for a few minutes. My reverie was interrupted by the hotel boy’s arrival with my mended coat; I tipped him a dollar, U.S. — somehow I’d never gotten around to changing money yet — and let him out again. As I turned back to the room I spotted the little piece of paper Basil had missed. Cursing the bad ribs, I bent down and picked it up.
When you carry a letter around in your pocket for a long time, folded in three the way letters are, the paper tends to fray along the fold, then, as time wears on, to break off. This was the bottom third of a very short letter. Basil presumably had the top of it, and that part would tell him what the letter said. It wouldn’t — or could, once I thought about it; the expensive deckle-edged stock might be monogrammed or even embossed at the top — tell him who the writer was. Basil Morse had his half, I had mine. I wished I could see his half right now. Mine told me damn little:
...l’honneur, mon general, de visiter chez moi.
Bien sincierement,
That was all. And “Komapob?” No. The signature had to be in Russian, even if the letter had been in French. Even now, if a Russian studies a foreign language and it’s not English, it’s likely to be French — tradition. “Komaroff,” then. But who was Komaroff? The name didn’t ring any bells at all. Perhaps — just perhaps — the General had been playing a little game with the Russians. Selling the arms to the highest bidder, toying with the notion of dumping the arms shipment on the Soviets so they could, in turn, “loan” the lot to one of their ever more strange bedfellows around the world for a revolution, or a palace coup.
And if he had been, who would Komaroff — apparently his contact in the matter — be? I gave the mental file a quick check, then a slower one. At neither time did I come up with any reference to anybody named Komaroff, at any level I knew about — and that would be pretty high level. KGB, the Party hierarchy, the whole list of “diplomatic” phonies operating out of the embassies and consulates — everywhere in my mental file that I looked, I drew the same blank.
I poured myself another painkiller and settled back into the seat, favoring the rib cage. Russians, Russians... my mind started free-associating all by itself. Who did I know in the Far East that was Russian? Who would the General know? Who would...
Who would Meyer know?
Of course.
I dug out my wallet and pulled out the homey little photo the late Mr. Meyer had been so fond of. And there she was: gorgeously dressed in a platinum wig and a flawless full-length mink coat, her wide-set, almond-shaped eyes looking up at the photographer through long lashes in a pose so sexy, so seductive, that... well, it made me begin to think interesting thoughts. Erotic thoughts. I blinked, came to, and gave her the once-over again, this time for purely informational purposes, trying to fix the face so that I’d be sure to recognize it.
The mouth was a trifle too wide and a little too full-lipped for absolute perfection, whatever that is. The cheeks had a Tartar broadness that seems to be out of style in some quarters. Not in mine. For my dough she was a lot of woman.
To Hermann with love, the delicate writing on the back of the picture had said. Tatiana...
Okay, so I had a face and a name. There are enough White Russians — daughters, granddaughters, and even great-granddaughters of the original Civil War exiles — left in the Far East for the name to be less of a novelty than it might be in Dubuque. But girls with that name and that face?
I got on the phone again.
“Fredericks here.”
“It’s Hong Kong’s favorite import.”
“What can I do for you, Nick?”
“I need some dope on a broad. The girl is White Russian, and she’s got a blonde wig on in this photo I have. The eyes are set nice and wide and they have this lozenge shape about them, with a little tilt at the corners. Maybe some Oriental blood. On her it looks terrific. The cheekbones are wide — Slavic influence — and the mouth is nice and full...”
“And her name is Tatiana?”
“How’d you... oh, yeah. I sort of thought she’d be hard to hide in a town like this.”
“Oh, she does precious little hiding, chum. Rather the other way round. What do you want with her?”
“Well, I want to see her...”
“Few things could possibly be more easily arranged. Go on.”
“And I want to talk with her...”
“And so do we all. Even myself, in my modest way.” Straight-faced stuff. Hah. Fred wasn’t the most successful plover in the British foreign service, perhaps — just the best below Cabinet rank or so. “That’s not so easily arranged. To put it bluntly, old man, His Excellency himself has been attempting to get into the lady’s boudoir for the better part of a year, with deplorable results, I might add. And the object of this... conversation?”
“Work, not play. She may have information that I need.”
“Oh, Nick! You can get information from the bloody museum, chum. Have you no sense of the proprieties? Have you no sense of masculine honor? Have you no...”
“Where do I find her?”
“Oh, let’s see. It’s after nine. Give a call down to the Baghdad, in Kowloon. Nice little walk from where you are. You’d be just in time to catch the last show, I think, if you can get reservations. Pity I can’t make it: His Excellency has entree, and we could sort of sneak in on the old boy’s coattails. Better cash in a few war bonds, Nick. It’s steep there.”
“She’s in a floor show? In a night club?”
“Just call the number, Nicholas.” Fred’s voice sounded I tired and disgusted.
Chapter Nine
It must have been an off night. There was one table left unreserved when I called in. The haughty maitre d’ accepted a bill that a large Hong Kong family could live on for a month. In short, the seat I ended up with was not the one he’d had in mind for me, and some other poor devil wound up sitting behind a column.