what many claim to be the finest restaurant in the Netherlands; it is indisputably the best bargain.
Hilaire Delvaux, having shown his ID and paid his $1.50 at the door, had moved through the cafeteria line and helped himself to a double portion of dilled shrimp and asparagus salad, and to consomme madrilene. From the T- shirted man behind the counter, he had ordered the hall’s renowned Friday Night Special, Beef Wellington, accompanied by fresh slivered green beans and mushrooms.
Now he sat at a marred plastic-topped table, the food in front of him. Elfin and plump, with his small feet barely touching the floor, he made an odd figure among the lean, uniformed soldiers dressed in the blues and greens and browns of seven different armies.
Delvaux had looked forward all day to the Beef Wellington; he had more than once described it as England’s sole contribution to the world’s cuisine. Since his hot dog with Gideon that morning, he had eaten nothing, in order to conserve his appetite. But now he wasn’t hungry. The meat lay cooling on his plate, its crust slowly turning soggy.
The conference with Embacher had gone badly. The director general, never an easy man to get along with, was understandably under pressure to solve the case. He had ranted and desk-pounded even more than usual:
Yes, Delvaux thought, shuffling string beans with his fork, he understood very well. For all anyone knew, Operation Philidor might be a small adventuristic sortie… or it might be the start of World War III, the end of European civilization. But couldn’t Embacher grasp the kinds of problems he faced? They had doubled his staff of agents to twenty-four, but how could twenty-four men keep track of the forty-four members of the USOC staff? They couldn’t—not when one needed at least three men to keep full-time surveillance on a single person, and not when the entire staff had ID cards that would admit them to nearly any base in Europe.
Later on, a massive review of airline and customs records, and of military records as well, might turn up the source. But how much difference would it make later on? As of now, it could be any one of them. Well, not Professor Oliver and probably not Frederick Rufus. But even there, could one be sure?
He pushed himself away from the table and went to get coffee, nearly bumping absentmindedly into two kilted Scots. What he needed was a hundred men; Embacher should have brought in agents from the CIA, from MI-5. Delvaux had suggested that, and Embacher had just raved on and turned a deeper purple. The man would rather see the end of the world than lose face.
That’s what came of putting political appointees in such positions. Leaving Delvaux with no coherent instructions, he had stomped from the room and run off for an airplane to take him to SHAPE headquarters in Mons.
As he sat down with the coffee, an aide from the director general’s office ran breathlessly to his table; there was a top-priority call for him from Spain. Would he come at once?
“Yes, Karl,” Delvaux said into the mouthpiece, “I understand. But I wish to hear his exact words. Will you read the transcript to me, please, from the point where he admits what he was doing, or rather, just before?”
Clearly, but crackling and thin, the words came from the agent in Madrid:
