Mr. Mott,” Herr Horst said.
Haynes picked up the phone and said, “Yes, Howard?”
“The ex-senator just called me,” Howard Mott said. “His client wants to postpone the bidding for two days. Until Wednesday.”
“Why?”
“The senator says that’s none of our business, but if we still want to
Haynes said, “Call him back and tell him I’ve got a new firm offer of seven hundred and fifty thousand.”
“I don’t lie well enough to convince him of that.”
“You don’t have to. The CIA made the offer in person this afternoon in front of a witness.”
“What witness?”
“Erika McCorkle.”
“Ah.”
“What’s ‘ah’ mean this time?”
“It means I’ll call the senator back and agree to the postponement—providing, of course, that he agrees the bidding will begin at seven hundred and fifty thousand.”
“What d’you think he’ll do?”
“I think that this Wednesday the senator will offer you eight hundred thousand dollars,” Mott said. “The real question, of course, is what will you do?”
“See whether the CIA raises, what else?”
Chapter 33
Back in his room at the Willard Hotel, Haynes counted the rings of the phone call he was making. Halfway through the sixth ring, Howard Mott answered with a gruff hello.
After Haynes identified himself, Mott said, “Now what?”
“Suppose I wanted to find out—”
“Why don’t we just skip the ‘suppose’?” Mott said.
“All right. I want to find out where some CIA people worked in nineteen seventy-three and ’seventy-four.”
“Ask the agency.”
“They’d just tell me to fuck off.”
“Sound advice.”
Haynes said nothing, letting the silence build until Mott said, “You’re serious.”
“Very.”
There was another silence, briefer this time, before Mott said, “I can give you a number to call.”
“What about a name?”
“There’s no name. Just some rigamarole.”
Haynes sighed. “Okay.”
“Go to a pay phone and call the number I’m going to give you. You’ll reach an answering machine that’ll repeat the number you’ve just dialed. At the sound of the beep, you say, ‘Warren Oates,’ read off your pay phone’s number and hang up. Got it?”
“Warren Oates,” Haynes said.
“Two minutes after you hang up, the pay phone will ring. Pick up just after the first ring and, instead of saying hello, say—hold on a second—”
“I say, ‘Hold on a second’?”
“No, goddamnit, you don’t say that. I’ll tell you what to say in a moment.”
In the brief silence that followed, Haynes pictured Howard Mott rummaging in the pigeonholes of his old rolltop oak desk, searching for the secret password.
Mott came back on the phone with a question. “What’s the date—the twenty-ninth?”
“Right.”
“Okay. New Hampshire is alphabetically the twenty-ninth state. So you say, ‘Concord.’ ”
“Which is its capital.”
“State capitals are the code of the month.”
“State capitals and dead actors,” Haynes said. “Then what?”
“Then you’ll have thirty seconds to explain what you want.”
