Instead, he said, “Spiegel’s dead. No question?”
“No question. Vérité is trying to get air tickets for us to leave today. She’ll do it if anyone can.”
“Paris?”
“Yes. You’ll let them know?”
“Yes. You want me to send this stuff?”
“No. I can take it. Vérité knows what I’ve got. I’m working for Malacod. That means I must turn all this over to him.”
“No problem. I’ll photograph the lot.”
“Not the second sheet. That was private for me.”
“Okay.”
“WWK/2 – that’s Lancing’s tab?”
“Yes.”
“He’s pretty far gone. What happened at Kotor?”
“I was there – but some bastard jumped me. Drove me fifty miles into the hills and dumped me.”
“Spiegel?”
“Possibly. Old Baldy’s clearly kept him in touch. Ma Spiegel’s transistor must be a receiver.”
He went to a cupboard and brought out a camera and a powerful desk lamp. “Negatives will get to Paris a day, maybe two days, after you. Pull the curtains, will you?”
I went over and pulled the heavy curtains over the wide studio windows. A butterfly flew out of one of the folds. On the way back, a thought occurred to me. I bent over, patted the cat and made noises at the kittens.
Oglu fiddled with the desk lamp and checked his camera. He worked quickly, expertly, completely at home with the white man’s magic. He said, “They’re not going to like the Spiegel business.”
“They?”
“Spiegel’s friends. They’ve got simple book-keeping minds. Account will have to be balanced. So expect a visit. Or am I teaching my grandmother?”
“It had crossed my mind.”
“Good. Keep your fingers off the text.”
I held the notes and photo under the light, while he clicked away industriously.
I said, “What’s all the Lottie Bemans angle?”
“Don’t know. I’m on the fringe, like you.”
“You can do better than that.”
He said, “Her last known address was Munich. P.A.D. Chalkokondyli.A. That’ll be the Police Aliens’ Department, Chalkokondyli Street, Athens. I know it. Anyone staying for more than a month in Greece must get an identity card. Lancing checked her there and her card was overdue.”
It was interesting, but not what I wanted to know. He picked up the sheet of notes and studied the script. I went over and started to pull the curtains back.
He gave me a long hard look and said, “You’re sure that this is absolutely everything that you got from Lancing?”
I turned. He had the notes in his hand and he was watching me, the sunlight striking full on his face as I drew the last curtain back.
“Absolutely everything.”
He said, “How did you cover this with the girl? Vérité?”
I said, “I told her I took a row-boat for a look around the Komira and somebody tossed it over to me.”
“She that gullible?”
“I’m not worrying about her. Malacod’s the snag. I’ll have to expand it a little for him.”
“You’re in trouble.”
“I’ll work through it.”
He shrugged his shoulders. Then suddenly he smiled, walked to the cupboard and put his equipment away, and came back with a bottle of brandy and two glasses.
We drank to one another.
As I lowered my glass, I found myself looking into the muzzle of an automatic.
“Don’t tell me,” I said, “that you carry that to protect the cat.”
He smiled, shook his head and said quietly, “I may be doing you an injustice. Probably. But I have a job to do. If you were regular I wouldn’t be doing this.”
“Just what are you doing?”
“Making sure that you didn’t get anything else from Lancing.”
“So?”
“Just strip off. The cat won’t mind. Starkers.” He fidgeted with the automatic.
I stripped. Dropping it all in a heap on the floor.
“Shoes and socks,” he said. “Take ’em off standing.”
I started the necessary balancing act, and said, “I’m supposed to be getting a shave.”
He motioned me away from the clothes and reached out without looking to the carpenter’s bench, his hand seeking for something. He tossed a small leather case to me. I caught it, and then unzipped it. There was a Philishave battery model inside.
I began to shave while he went through the pile of clothing, the automatic on the floor, too close at hand for me to have tried anything if I had wanted to make an issue of things. But I didn’t. The colour slide was not on me.
I shaved and, when he had finished with the clothes, he came over to me and made me turn my back to him. I felt as though I were up for sale in a slave market. One Anglo-Saxon, fit and sound, but only reasonably honest, and not to be trusted in the harem. The cat – kittens butting at her dugs – watched me, but she didn’t make any bid. Oglu’s hand finished feeling around the bandage on my arm.
“Okay,” he said.
I turned. “A pleasure.”
He shrugged. “My apologies.”
I dressed. We had another brandy and parted friends.
I went over and patted the cat and kittens good-bye, and palmed the colour slide which I had hidden under them.
At the door, as he saw me out, he said, “For God’s sake don’t try anything clever. The whole thing’s too big for that. And don’t worry about the air tickets. I’ll phone and check whether she’s got them. If she hasn’t, just come back here in two hours and they’ll be waiting.”
But Vérité had got them, and we caught an afternoon flight to Zagreb, changed to Air France, and were in Paris in time for dinner. Vérité had booked a room for me at the Castiglione Hotel. After dinner, I took her with her cases to her flat and told her I’d be round in the morning. When I got back to my hotel Casalis was waiting for me, which didn’t surprise me. That side of the organization was sound enough.
I said, “If you think I’m going back to that flat, you’re crazy. Spiegel’s stiff and Howard Johnson has a broken arm. They’re the kind that like to even the score. I feel safer here.”
He nodded, and
