'Instead of sitting here, beating out my brains over an old mystery nobody cares about, I should be concentrating going back to California and the wife and kids.'
'How many?'
'Kids? Eight, all told. Five boys and three girls.'
'You must be Catholic.'
Steiger smiled. 'With a name like Abraham Levi Steiger? You've got to be kidding.'
'By the way, you neglected to mention how the brass explained away Vixen 03's flight plan.'
'General O'Keefe found the original. It didn't jibe with our analysis of the one from the wreck.'
Pitt pondered a moment and then asked, 'Do you have a Xerox copy I might borrow?'
'Of the flight plan?'
'Just the sixth page.'
'Outside, locked in the trunk of my car. Why?'
'A shot in the dark.' Pitt said. 'I have this friend over at FBI who can't resist a good crossword puzzle.'
'Must you really leave tonight?' Loren asked Pitt.
'I'm expected at a morning meeting to discuss salvage operations,' he said from the bathroom, where he was loading his shaving kit.
'Damn,' she said, pouting. 'I might as well have an affair with a traveling salesman.'
He entered the bedroom. 'Come now, to you I'm nothing but a current toy.'
'That's not so.' She flung her arms around him. 'Next to Phil Sawyer, you're my very favorite person.'
Pitt looked at her. 'Since when have you been seeing the President's press secretary?'
'When the stud is away, Loren will play.'
'But good God! Phil Sawyer. He wears white shirts and talks like a thesaurus.'
'He asked me to marry him.'
'I may vomit.'
She held him tightly. 'Please, no sarcasm tonight.'
'I regret I can't be more of an adoring lover to you, but I'm too damned selfish to commit myself. I'm not capable of giving the one hundred percent a woman like you needs.'
'I'll settle for any percentage I can get.'
He leaned down and kissed her on the throat. 'You'd make Phil Sawyer a rotten wife.'
27
Thomas Machita paid his admission and entered the grounds of the traveling amusement fair, one of many that sprang up on holidays around the South African countryside. It was Sunday and large groups of Bantu and their families lined up at the Ferris wheel, merry-go-round, and booth games. Machita made his way over to the ghost ride, according to Emma's telephone instructions.
He was undecided as to which tool he would employ to kill Emma. The razor blade taped to his left forearm left much to be desired. The tiny bit of steel was a closein weapon, lethal only if he sliced his victim's jugular vein in an unguarded, discreet moment, an opportunity Machita considered quite remote in view of the sizable crowd around him.
Machita finally decided on the ice pick. He let out a satisfied sigh, as though he had solved a great scientific riddle. The pick was unobtrusively threaded among the strands of a basket clutched in his hands. The wooden handle had been removed, and in its place electrical tape had been wound several times around the needlelike shaft. A quick thrust between the ribs to the heart, or into an eye or an ear; if he could somehow ram the shaft into one of Emma's eustachian tubes, there would be little if any body fluid to tell the tale.
Machita tightened his grip on the basket that held both the ice pick and the two million dollars for the payoff. His turn came and he paid for a ticket and mounted the platform of the ghost ride. The couple ahead of him, a giggling man and his obese wife, snuggled their way into a small car that seated two. The attendant, an old, haggardlooking derelict who constantly sniffed at a runny nose, lowered a safety bar over their legs and shoved a large lever protruding from the floor. The car bounced forward on a track and rolled through two swinging doors. Soon, women's screams could be heard escaping from the darkened interior.
Machita entered the next car. He relaxed and became amused at the thought of the ride. Images of his childhood returned and he remembered cringing in a similar car during another ghost ride long ago as phosphorescent banshees lurched out of the blackness at him.
He did not observe the attendant as the lever was pushed; nor did he react immediately when the old man leaped agilely into the car with him and lowered the safety bar.
'I hope you enjoy the ride,' said a voice that Machita knew to be Emma's.
Once again the mysterious informer had shrewdly capitalized on Machita's laxity. The odds favoring a clean kill had suddenly evaporated.
Emma's hands expertly frisked his clothing. 'How very wise of you to come unarmed, my dear Major.'
A score for our side, thought Machita, his hands casually holding the basket and shielding the ice pick. 'Do you have Operation Wild Rose?' he asked, his tone official.
'Do you have the two million American dollars?' the shadowy figure beside him retorted.
Machita hesitated and unconsciously ducked as the car swung beneath a tall stack of barrels that fell over toward them, jerking to a stop bare inches from their heads.
'Here… in the basket.'
Emma pulled an envelope from inside a dirty jacket. 'Your boss will find this most interesting reading.'
'If not vastly overpriced.'
Machita was glancing through the documents in the envelope when a pair of grotesquely painted witches, fluoresced by ultraviolet light, leaped at the car and shrieked through hidden loudspeakers. Emma ignored the wax figures and opened the basket studying the print on the currency under the purple illumination. The car rolled onward as the witches were pulled back into their recess by hidden springs and the tunnel plunged into darkness again.
Now! Machita thought. He snatched the ice pick from its hiding place and lunged at where he guessed Emma's right socket should be. But in that split second the car snapped into a sharp turn and an orange floodlight burst on a bearded Satan who menacingly brandished a pitchfork. It was enough to deflect Machita's aim. The pick missed Emma's eye and its tip became embedded in the skull, above the brow.
The stunned informer cried out, chopped Machita's hand away and plucked the thin shaft from his head. Machita grabbed the razor blade taped to his forearm and swung it at Emma's throat in a sweeping backhand slash. But his wrist was smashed downward by the devil's pitchfork, snapping the bone.
The devil was genuine. He was one of Emma's accomplices. Machita countered by throwing open the safety bar and lashing out with his feet, catching the costumed man in the groin, feeling his heels sink deeply into soft flesh. Then the car swung back into blackness and the devil was left behind.
Machita whipped his body back to face Emma, but found the seat beside him empty. A brief stream of sunlight flashed several meters to the left of the car as a door was opened and closed. Emma had vanished out an exit, taking the basket of money with him.
28
'Gross stupidity,' said Colonel Jumana with fiendish satisfaction. 'You must pardon me for saying it, my General, but I told you so.'
Lusana stared pensively out the window at a formation of men drilling on the parade grounds. 'A mistake in judgment, Colonel, nothing more. We will not lose the war because we have lost two million dollars.'
A sheepish Thomas Machita sat at the table, his face beaded with perspiration, staring vacantly at the cast covering his wrist. 'There was no way of knowing — '
