shrimp. All the guys go there.
Crow: All right, go ahead.
Pino: So I’m in this bar, and this guy comes up to me, and he’s a reporter from the New York Times. Mr. Johnson.
Crow: Did you see some identification?
Pino: What, are you kidding? A guy starts talking to me in a bar, I’m supposed to ask for his ID?
Crow: What did he look like?
Pino: I don’t know—like a reporter, I guess. He was pretty old, fifty or sixty. He seemed like an okay guy.
Crow: All right, go ahead.
Pino: So he tells me he’s writing this story about the crummy security on American bases. Like a, a …
Crow: An expose?
Pino: Right, right. So he says if I put the stuff in this guy’s book, he’ll sneak it off the base and then the Times does a big article, and then they’ll pass some laws to tighten up security.
Crow: Co ahead.
Pino: Well, that’s all, man. I know it’s dumb, but I done it. I was trying to be patriotic.
Crow: He gave you money, didn’t he?
Pino: Well, yeah, a hundred dollars, but that’s not why I done it. I—
Delvaux cut in. “Karl, did you find out how he knew which book to put it in?”
“Yes, he—”
“No, read me the transcript.”
For a moment there was no sound but the crackling and humming of the wires. “Here it is,” said the agent.
Pino: The guy in the bar, he told me to put it in the back of a book, just stick it between the pages so it doesn’t show.
Crow: Just any book?
Pino: No, he gave me the name. I wrote it on a piece of paper. Hey, I still got it. It’s in my wallet. (Contents of wallet examined. Found cocktail napkin with penciled note: Skull of Sinanthropus Pekinensis, Franz Weidenreich.)
“Why did he say he took the radio, Karl? Impulse?”
“Uh-uh. Here, let me find it… ”
“No, no. You can just tell me.”
“He says the man in the bar told him to take it. Not the radio, necessarily, just something. Pino said the man told him it would be a cover.”
“I’m afraid I don’t see—”
“Well—this is according to Pino, now—the alleged reporter told him that Oliver had ways of knowing if anyone had been in his room, even if a single book or anything was moved a fraction of an inch. But if something was missing, the idea was that Oliver would be bound to think somebody had been in there to steal something; it wouldn’t occur to him that somebody had left something.”
Delvaux laughed drily. “What do you think of all this, Karl?”
“We haven’t put Pino on the polygraph yet, but I’d bet he’s not lying. I think the whole thing is so crazy that maybe it’s true.”
“That’s precisely what I think. Splendid work, Karl. You’ve done wonderfully.”
Delvaux’s breath was shallow with excitement as he replaced the telephone. So Monkes had been correct after all. It was Gideon Oliver, but an innocent Gideon Oliver, who was unknowingly carrying tactical aircraft deployment plans from Torrejon. No doubt the Russians had gotten the information in the same way at Sigonella, only then it had been three pairs of socks, not a radio, that had served as cover.
If only he had given credence to Oliver’s complaint then and had investigated the theft… But it was too late for that now. Now the only important thing was to find Oliver and the book before the Russians did. How strange to think that the key to an East-West confrontation might lie between the pages of an abstruse text in the care of a brilliant but frighteningly naive professor of anthropology.
But where was Oliver? He had been scheduled for a flight from Madrid to Frankfurt that afternoon. He was probably in Germany already, on his way to Heidelberg. My God, was it already too late? There must have been a hundred chances for them to get the information from Oliver: at the airport in Madrid, on the airplane itself, at the Frankfurt airport, at the train station in Frankfurt… No, he told himself. Do not become addle-brained at the moment of success. Be rational.
There was no time to waste on speculation. Oliver had to be found quickly. With Operation Philidor set for Sunday, the Russians would have to get hold of the information within the next twenty-four hours, and that would mean some time tomorrow, no doubt at Heidelberg. Whoever the USOC source was, and however patient, he would be tense with the strain of operating on a timetable that left no room for error. And tense spies were dangerous spies; Oliver’s life would be in considerable peril as long as he held the deployment plans.
