"The Black Ice Score" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stark Richard)

Three

1

Claire’s head hurt. That’s what woke her up, the pounding of it behind her forehead, up behind her eyes. A real killer of a headache, so that her first conscious thought was I must have drunk too much. But then through the pain came more consciousness, and awareness, and memory, and she thought, I didn’t drink anything yesterday. That made her open her eyes, and she saw she was in a place she’d never been before.

She wasn’t frightened at first, just bewildered. Continuing to lie there on her side, head cradled by the pillow, covers pulled up around her neck, she looked at the slice of room she could see, the gray wall and the brown kitchen chair and the closed old-fashioned-looking door, and she wondered, Where am I?

Her clothing was on. She suddenly realized that. She was in bed with the covers pulled up, but underneath the covers she was fully dressed. She was wearing everything but shoes.

She sat up abruptly and looked around, and it was a room she didn’t know, a large bedroom with old furniture in it: the brass double bed she was in, two dressers, a vanity, night tables, and two more brown kitchen chairs. The bedside lamps had pleated pink shades. The windows had white curtains and dark green shades, the shades halfway down. Gray-white daylight poured through the lower half of the windows. Two windows, both along the wall opposite the bed.

There was no one else in the room. Claire listened, and there was no sound from anywhere in the house.

Where was she? How had she gotten here?

It was hard to think with this pounding headache, hard to make sense out of anything. She bent her head and massaged her temples, and that seemed to work a little. She continued to massage gently and tried to think.

Where had she been last night? Where had she been at all yesterday?

She’d gone to a beauty parlor yesterday afternoon, downtown on Franklin Street, she remembered that. And then she’d gone looking to buy a fall, but she couldn’t find anything she really liked that matched her hair color. She’d gone back to the hotel, hoping Parker would be there today it was nine days today or at least a message from him, but there had been nothing. She hadn’t felt like dinner alone in a restaurant so she’d ordered something from room service, and while she’d eaten she’d looked at the paper to see what movie she wanted to sit through tonight or if there was anything at all bearable on television.

Had she gone to a movie? She couldn’t remember any movie, couldn’t remember any television either. What had she done after dinner? The last thing she could remember was eating dinner sitting on the chair at the writing-desk, the dishes spread out on the desk, the paper propped up against the wall in front of her. And feeling tired. And waking up here.

Drugged? Could that be the reason for this headache and the vagueness of her memory of last night? It had been a different waiter who’d brought in her dinner, but that hadn’t meant anything at the time; there were several different waiters she’d seen in the last nine days.

But that was what it must have been. She could remember eating dinner, not noticing any odd tastes about anything, and then growing very sleepy. Sitting at the writing-desk, the dishes in front of her, food left uneaten and she growing sleepier and sleepier.

Had she gotten up from the desk and gone over to stretch out on the bed? She couldn’t remember exactly. It seemed as though she’d done that, or at least had wanted to do it, but she couldn’t remember whether or not she’d actually made it out of the chair and over to the bed.

She rubbed her head. If only the pain would stop. She couldn’t think; she couldn’t concentrate.

Who would do this?

She looked at her watch. It was still running and it showed twenty-five minutes past four. Past four? It must be afternoon; she must have been asleep nearly twenty hours.

She pushed the covers off and slowly put her legs over the side of the bed. She was very shaky, nerves all ajangle. The pain in her head was worse when she moved, so she moved slowly, gingerly. Also, she didn’t want anyone to hear her and know she was awake. If there was anyone around to hear.

Standing made her dizzy. She kept one hand on the wall and tiptoed in stocking feet over to the door. It was locked. Gently she turned the knob, easily she pulled, and the door was locked.

The windows? She took the long way around, always keeping next to the wall, one palm flat on the wall for support. She reached the first window, remained leaning against the wall beside it, and bent her head to the glass to look out.

Second floor. A lake, with partially thawing ice, looking very cold and very bleak. Mountains beyond the lake, also cold, also bleak. A scruffy brown yard between the house and the lake, with a few bare-branched trees and some woody bushes. A dark, squat boathouse, and beside it a concrete deck.

A key grated in the door behind her and she spun around, suddenly terrified, losing her balance and almost falling, but leaning against the wall instead. Staying there beside the window, she watched the door open and a man come in.

It didn’t surprise her that he was one of the three who had been at the beginning of all this, before Gonor had shown up.

He looked at her and said, “You’re awake. Good.” Then he frowned, studying her across the room. “Something wrong?”

She shook her head. She couldn’t find anything to say, and she was terrified of what he might do.

He kept frowning, standing just inside the door, and then he seemed all at once to understand and to be made strangely embarrassed by it. He spread his hands, palms down. “You’re all right here,” he said. “You’re safe here. Do you want something to eat?”

She shook her head again. Her fear was beginning to fade, not so much because of his assurances as his embarrassment, but there was still nothing to say to him.

He looked around, apparently at a loss, wanting to establish contact and not knowing how. “If you need anything,” he said, “just knock on the door. I’ll come by.”

“I need to go home,” she said. “Back to the hotel.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Not yet.”

“When?”

“Pretty soon. You sure you’re not hungry?”

She surprised herself by asking, “Do you have any aspirin?”

He smiled happily. “Sure,” he said. “Be right back.” He left, and she noticed he took the time to lock the door behind him.

Now she was angry at herself for having asked. It had given him the contact he wanted; it had given him her acceptance of the situation. She felt as though she had allowed him a victory he didn’t deserve, and she considered refusing the aspirin when he brought it, but realized that would be an empty gesture and wouldn’t reclaim the loss.

What a stupid way to be thinking. She looked around the room, cold and bare and minimal.

She needed Parker.

2

Jock Daask liked his women with meat on their bones and brains in their heads, and this girl Claire had both. He sat across the kitchen table from her, watching her eat the corn flakes and milk that was the only food they had for her, and he reflected that he would have liked to have met her some other way. He reflected also on the sexual implications of their current roles in relation to one another kidnapper and victim but the possibilities for rape didn’t really interest him. Jock Daask wasn’t that sort of man.

He wasn’t all that sure what sort of man he was, in fact. His current roles could only be described in negatives he had kidnapped but was not a kidnapper, he would steal but was not a thief and it seemed to him his whole life was expressed only in the same terms of contradiction. He had been born in Africa, but was not an African. His parents were Europeans, but he was not a European. He had done well at the university in England, but he was not an intellectual. He had been a mercenary soldier in various parts of Africa, but he was not a rootless adventurer. There was nothing about him, it seemed, that did not include its own negative.

Jock Daask was the son of a wealthy plantation owner in Africa, and he had grown up always knowing that everything and everybody he saw belonged to his father and would one day belong to him. His friends in his youth were the children of other white landowners, and even then they had all seemed to be aware of their essential dislocation, at once the ruling class and exiles. Still, it was worth exile to be a member of the ruling class.

Until independence. The nation of Dhaba was spared the more gruesome birth pains of many of the new African states, but even in a land of peaceful turnover one fact could not be gotten around: the white ruling class had to go.

Daask had been in London at the time, doing postgraduate work at the university, and he hadn’t known anything was wrong until his father phoned him from London Airport to come out and pick him up. Their land had been taken from them, not by spear-waving cannibals but by paper-waving bureaucrats, bland men with empty smiles.

The number of ex-colonists in London and in other parts of Europe continued to grow. And the idea of counterattack grew, from men like Aaron Marten, whom Daask had known since childhood, who were determined to get their own back one way or another no matter what. And from men like General Enfehr Goma, the unsuccessful first candidate for president of Dhaba, who would be willing to live the life of a comfortable figurehead if the Aaron Martens could put them on the throne.

They could do it. There was nothing strategic about Dhaba, not in minerals or geographic location or rivers or anything else, and so no European power would intervene. The neighboring African states all had sufficient internal problems to keep them from doing anything more than complain at the UN. All they needed was the money to mount the offensive. The current president, Colonel Joseph Lubudi, was so patently corrupt that the masses of the nation might even welcome General Goma, or at least wouldn’t be violently opposed to him.

But it couldn’t be done without money. And from where would the money come? The ex-landowners had lost practically everything. General Goma had no money of his own and couldn’t attract the support of anyone with money. So where would they get the money?

From Dhaba. From Colonel Lubudi. From the Colonel’s brother-in-law, Patrick Kasempa.

Daask again looked at the woman Claire eating a third bowl of cereal. If he were Parker, and this Claire were his woman, he would trade Gonor and the diamonds for her in a minute. Parker would cooperate; Daask was sure of it.

She became aware of his eyes on her and abruptly stopped eating. “That’s all I want,” she said sullenly, pushing the bowl away.

“You must still be hungry,” he said, trying to sound gentle and friendly. He knew it was absurd, but he wanted her not to dislike him.

And it was true that she had to still be hungry. She hadn’t eaten since the drugged dinner at the hotel in Boston last night at around seven o’clock, and here it was nearly midnight. Twenty-nine hours without food. Bob had insisted they not offer her anything to eat until she asked for it, so all she had had at first was the aspirin and water he’d brought her this afternoon. When she’d finally knocked on the door and asked for something to eat it was clear she hadn’t wanted to ask for anything at all but had been driven to it by hunger.

And something in his expression when she’d met his eyes just now had driven her away from hunger again. “I don’t want any more,” she said and folded her arms as though she were chilly, though it was warm here in the kitchen.

Bob Quilp was out in the living-room waiting for the call from Aaron saying that Parker would cooperate, that everything was going to be all right. Daask had a very strong feeling about the closeness of this kitchen, his solitude with this woman, the persistent sexual overtones of the relationship thrust upon them. He couldn’t help it, and he didn’t intend to do anything about it, but the aura itself was pleasurable and he wanted to prolong it.

“A glass of milk,” he said. “Would you like that?”

“I want to go upstairs again,” she said. She got to her feet and stood there waiting.

Daask was suddenly irritated by her. Didn’t she feel the ambience between them? Wasn’t she aware of what sort of person he couldbe, how lucky she was that he was gentle? He wanted to say something about it, to point it out to her, but he couldn’t find any phrasing that didn’t sound silly somehow. Or threatening.

He shrugged and got to his feet. “Up to you,” he said. “You go first.”

They went up to the second floor, and she went willingly into her room. He stood in the doorway a minute, watching her go over to the bed and sit down with her back to him.

Then he said, “In a little while we’ll have to tie you up.”

She turned her head, and it pleased him to see a little glint of fear in her eyes. “Why? I won’t try to get away.”

“We’ll be leaving,” he said. “We’ll tie you when we go. But we’re going to tell Parker where you are, so don’t worry. He’ll probably be here before morning.”

She shook her head. “He won’t do what you want him to do.”

“Of course he will,” Daask said reasonably. “You’re more important to him than Gonor is; it only makes sense.”

“He can’t stand to be pushed,” she said.

“He’ll cooperate,” Daask said. “It’s only sensible.”

She shrugged and turned her back again.

Daask was about to say something else, but from downstairs he heard the ringing of a telephone. “That’s it now,” he said and shut the door. He locked it and hurried back downstairs.

3

William Manado sat on the floor in the back of the truck and fingered his machine gun. It was too dark to see anything except when an occasional automobile drove down Thirty-eighth Street from Park Avenue and its headlights shone through the windows in the rear doors, illuminating himself and Formutesca sitting across the way. Formutesca smiled encouragingly at him every time there was light that way, but in the intervals of darkness there was no encouragement from anywhere, and Manado was frightened.

He hadn’t shown it; not to Formutesca, not to Parker, certainly not to Gonor. He hadn’t shown it, he wouldn’t show it, and he wouldn’t let it interfere. But he couldn’t deny it either he was afraid.

Unlike Formutesca and Gonor, unlike most of the governing class of Dhaba, Manado was not from a professional family. There were no doctors, lawyers, civil servants or engineers in his background. He had come from a village family, a very poor village family, and he would be a very poor villager himself today if it were not for one thing. Manado could run.

He was fast, and he was tireless, and he could pace himself. He had run himself on to the track team at Tchidanga School, and he had run himself into an exchange scholarship for a Midwestern American university. Fortunately, his brain was as fast as his body, and he’d been able to take advantage of the advantages his running had brought him. He majored in political science at the American university, mostly because all exchange students were expected to major in political science, and took his minor in mathematics, because he liked to watch numbers run. As for America, what that country offered him because he had brains and speed baffled him almost as much as what was refused him because he was black. Afterwards, when people at home asked him about that, what it was like to be a black man in America, he always said, “Well, it takes some getting used to.” What he meant was, “I’m not sure, but I think maybe it’s worth getting used to.”

His experience of the United States got him offered the post at the UN mission, and the ambivalence of his feelings toward the United States made him accept. Would it be different in New York City from in the Midwest? Would it be different for a member of a UN mission rather than a student? Not much.

In a way, it was America’s ambivalence toward him that first made him consciously a patriot about his homeland. He saw that Dhaba with idealistic men at her helm could eventually offer everything America offers, and without the left-handed taking away. He wanted that; he wanted it badly.

Badly enough to be sitting here in this darkness, a machine gun cradled in his lap, waiting to steal and to kill.

Could he kill? He hated the Kasempas for their rape of his homeland. He was afraid of them for their reputations as brutal men. What the hatred and the fear would combine to form he didn’t yet know. He had never killed anyone, had rarely ever fought with anyone. He had a secret admiration for men like Parker, who could face the bloodiest possibilities without flinching, but he believed he could never be like them.

He heard movement, a rustling sound, and knew it was Formutesca looking at his watch again, reading the green fingers of the luminous dial. Then Formutesca whispered, “Two o’clock.”

Time. Manado nodded, even though Formutesca couldn’t see him, and moved on hands and knees to the rear of the truck dragging his machine gun behind him. He looked out the window in the door and the street was empty, so he pushed the door open and climbed out to the street, leaving the machine gun on the floor of the truck.

Formutesca climbed out after him. “Start unloading,” he said and went around to talk to Gonor in the cab of the truck.

Manado brought out the ladder and propped it against the rear of the truck. Then he got his own machine gun, found Formutesca’s, and wrapped them both in an old pink bedspread and laid the package on the curb. Finally he took out the long wooden toolkit and put that also on the curb. He shut the doors, and Formutesca came back.

“All set,” Formutesca said.

Manado looked up at the museum’s top-floor windows. They were dark; they’d been dark for over an hour now.

Formutesca carried the ladder; Manado carried the toolkit and guns. They crossed the curb and walked to the building next door to the museum. Formutesca had a key that would open the inner door. There was no one around.

They couldn’t use the elevator; they didn’t know whether the superintendent could hear the motor or not. He had seemed unusually conscientious Parker and Formutesca had both said so and he just might come out to see who was moving around in his building at two in the morning.

So they climbed stairs to the fifth floor, and Formutesca led the way down the hall to the men’s room. He switched the light on and Manado said doubtfully, “Should we do that? What if somebody sees?”

“We can’t work in the dark,” Formutesca said.

“We have flashlights.”

Formutesca shook his head. “Parker says people don’t pay any attention to an ordinary light in a window,” he said. “But they see a flashlight moving around, right away they think it’s a burglar.”

“I suppose so,” said Manado, but the bright light continued to bother him. It made him feel exposed, as though hundreds of people were watching. Unconsciously, he moved with his shoulders hunched.

Formutesca was the one who’d been through this before, so Manado allowed himself to be taught. Formutesca showed him how the ladder was placed and then said, “You go across. Take your time, and you’ll be better off it you look straight ahead. I’ll hold the ladder steady at this end.”

“All right,” said Manado.

“You going to take the guns?”

“Yes.”

“Get up on the windowsill and I’ll hand them to you.”

Manado had no particular fear of heights, but crossing a space five stories up on a ladder was making him very nervous. He crouched on the windowsill while Formutesca handed him the package of guns, then put the package down gently crosswise on the ladder. He pushed the package ahead of himself and went crawling slowly out over the air.

In a way, he was glad this was happening at night. All he could see below him was blackness, with only the ladder itself and the roof rim ahead illuminated by spill from the window behind him. The package of guns gave him something to think about too, besides his nervousness.

He got across, lowered the package to the roof without making a clatter, got on to the roof himself, and turned around to signal to Formutesca that everything was all right.

Formutesca called softly, “Hold it steady for me.”

“I will.”

“One minute.”

Formutesca left the window, and Manado saw him walk over to the door and switch off the light. They wouldn’t be coming back this way, so Formutesca would have to cross in darkness.

Nothing happened for quite a while, and Manado understood that Formutesca was waiting for his eyes to adjust. Manado stood leaning on the end of the ladder holding it steady and waited. Now that the light was out, now that he was safely across the emptiness, he felt much better. The darkness cloaked him. His presence on this roof meant the enemy’s stronghold was already breached. Manado was beginning to feel good.

A small clatter, and vibration of the ladder against his hands. Peering across there, he saw that Formutesca had placed the toolkit on the ladder. Now here he came, pushing the heavy box ahead of him, moving slowly.

When the toolkit was close enough, Manado took one hand from the ladder and lifted it over on to the roof. Then he helped Formutesca over the edge, and the two of them pulled the ladder over and laid it down on the roof. They had to leave the window open over there; they had no choice, but it shouldn’t matter.

The day’s drizzle had ended several hours ago, but the air was cold enough so that a wet, slushy slickness covered most of the roof. They had to walk carefully carrying their equipment, and Manado wondered what would happen if he lost his balance and fell, the machine guns crashing around.

But it didn’t happen. They got to the elevator housing, and Formutesca used the key to unlock it. Now they did use a flashlight, seeing that the interior was as Parker had described it. The elevator was just below them on the fourth floor. Apparently, the Kasempas kept it on the first floor during the day for security’s sake but didn’t bother about doing that at night.

In the toolkit was a coil of rope. While Manado got it out, Formutesca climbed inside the elevator housing and stood spraddlelegged on the metal beams in there. Manado handed the rope in to him, and Formutesca tied one end to the central beam, being sure it was on tight and secure. The other end he lowered on to the elevator top, where it lay looped like a brown snake. They’d brought enough to reach the first floor, just in case.

While Formutesca climbed back out of the housing, Manado was getting the gloves from the toolkit. They worked now in silence, having gone over the details of this time and again with Parker. They both knew their parts.

Manado handed Formutesca a pair of gloves and put on the other pair himself. Then he climbed in where Formutesca had been. Their flashlight had a magnet on the side and was now attached to the housing, pointing down. In its light, Manado grabbed the rope and lowered himself slowly to the top of the elevator.

It made a metallic popwhen he stood on it, like a cooling oven, not loud, but startling in the middle of silence. Manado froze, one hand still on the rope, and listened. But there was no more sound, and when he looked up, Formutesca already had the other rope around the package of guns and was lowering it to him.

Manado eased the package down and untied the rope. As Formutesca pulled the rope back up, Manado opened the bedspread, smoothing it out over a large area of the elevator roof. It would muffle any more sounds they might make and it would keep them from getting filthy from the years of accumulated dust up here. He left the trapdoor area clear, and he put the two machine guns out of the way to one side.

The toolkit came down next. Manado got it, set it on the bedspread, and then gathered in the rope as Formutesca dropped it to him. He rolled the rope into a ball while Formutesca slid down the other one. Light and shadows flickered crazily for a minute, since Formutesca was bringing the flashlight down with him, and when Manado looked up he felt one sudden instant of irrational and superstitious fear. Like himself, Formutesca was dressed entirely in black, shoes and trousers and mackinaw and gloves, and sliding down the rope there, the flashlight beam bouncing this way and that, he looked absolutely satanic, lithe and lean and dangerous.

Manado felt the instant fear, and then he thought, That’s what I look like too, and all at once he felt very good. Not afraid of anything.

Standing beside him, Formutesca looked at his watch and whispered, “Ten after. Not bad.”

Manado was grinning. “I’m ready to go right now,” he whispered.

Formutesca grinned back at him. “I know what you mean. It’s too bad we have to wait.” He looked around. “Well, we might as well get ourselves comfortable.”

Manado’s grin faded slowly. Comfortable. Wait. His good feeling evaporated as fast as it had come. He looked up, the top of the housing indistinct up there now that the light source was down here. All at once it seemed as though they were in a grave.

“Sit down,” whispered Formutesca, who had already done so. “I want to switch off this light.”

Manado sat down, and Formutesca switched them into darkness. They had had to leave the housing open up there, and damp, cold air was settling in. Manado shivered.

4

Patrick Kasempa couldn’t sleep. It was the usual thing. He sat in the small room at the rear of the top floor, what he called his insomnia room, and he played hand after hand of solitaire. He never cheated, he rarely won, and he kept track of his record on a notepad he kept just to his right on the tabletop.

He never had insomnia at home in Tchidanga, never. It was the climate that did it; he’d known that for years the clammy climate of Europe and North America affected him badly. He always had insomnia when he traveled north from Dhaba. Only in the soft nights of the tropics could he find normal sleep.

Another two months of this. He didn’t know if he could last; he wasn’t sure how much longer he could take this. Joseph had made his move too early, that was obvious. He should have waited another three months before starting; he should have organized his timetable better. The result was, here they were, seven hundred thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds in their possession, sitting here like monkeys in a treetop waiting for some hunter to notice them and shoot them out of the branches. It was enough to keep a man awake even if he didn’t have insomnia to begin with.

The answer was, Colonel Joseph Lubudi was a stupid man. And the Colonel’s sister Lucille, whom Kasempa had married out of misplaced ambition, was as stupid as her brother or they wouldn’t be here now. No, the two of them would be in Acapulco at this very minute with the diamonds, rich and anonymous and safe. And asleep.

But no. They had to stay here in New York, this ugly city, this clammy graveyard, the whole city dank and gray. It’s a wonder anyone could sleep in a place like this. They had to stay here another two months; they had to wait for Lucille’s stupid brother to make his stupid move, to be caught, to be torn to pieces by an enraged mob and the pieces to be buried in some potter’s field somewhere. Thenthey could go to Acapulco, not before.

“Joseph will get away,” Lucille kept saying. “You’ll see.”

Bah.

The fact was, Colonel Lubudi would notget away, and Kasempa knew it. The Colonel had handled this whole affair so sloppily it was a miracle they hadn’t been found out yet. Would his enemies let him out of Dhaba without first counting the governmental knives and forks? Nonsense. Joseph was a dead man, and Patrick Kasempa knew it.

But he couldn’t tell that to Lucille. He could hint, he could talk around it, he could try to make her understand it herself, but if he were to directly advocate their disappearing with the diamonds, Lucille would be thrust into a dilemma of loyalties, husband versus brother, and Kasempa wasn’t all that sure in his mind which way such a dilemma would be resolved.

So there was nothing to do but wait. In New York City. Sleeplessly.

Another hand was stuck. Kasempa sighed and gathered the cards together and shuffled them. His wristwatch said the time was two forty-five. The way he was feeling, with luck he might be able to get to bed and to sleep by four. He shook his head and dealt out a new hand.

There was an explosion.

Kasempa looked up, the cards in his left hand. The blackness outside the window was unchanged.

It had been near, very near. In the building?

The alarm hadn’t sounded, so it couldn’t be either the front or back door. When the building had been converted to a museum and this apartment put in for the full-time curator the place had never needed, an alarm system had been built in to help protect the place from burglaries at night. When switched on, the alarm rang a bell in the master bedroom if either door was tampered with or opened. They kept the alarm switched on at all times, and the only instances when it had rung were the two times Gonor had brought visitors to the museum, once a few weeks ago and then again just this afternoon. If the explosion had meant someone trying to break in through one of the doors, the alarm would have sounded. So if it was in the building it had to be something else.

What?

Kasempa put the cards down, and got to his feet. He went to the door, opened it, and stood in the hallway listening.

Nothing.

A door along the hall opened, and Kasempa’s brother Albert appeared, sleepy-eyed but with a pistol in his hand. “What was it?”

“I don’t know. Listen.”

The two brothers stood facing one another listening. All the brothers were physically alike, short and bull-like and broad, but faster-moving than they looked.

Another. A sudden loud blast, an explosion. Like a hand grenade going off, or something larger.

In the building.

Albert said, “What the hell? It’s downstairs!”

“Come on!”

Another door opened as they hurried toward the elevator, and their brother Ralph called, “What’s going on?”

“Stay here,” Kasempa shouted back. “We’ll take a look downstairs.”

The elevator was already on this floor, and the door slid back when Kasempa pressed the button. They went in together and Albert said, “All the way down?”

“Of course!”

Albert pushed the button for the first floor, the door slid shut, and they started down.

Kasempa heard the slight sound above him. He looked up, and a rectangular opening was spreading in the ceiling. He saw eyes, hands in darkness, and something was flung in.

A grenade!

“No!” he shouted, recoiling. The elevator was suddenly too small. He and Albert were cramped together; neither could move.

But the thing hit the floor without exploding. It seemed to fall apart, to break open in two halves. A faint yellowish mist rose up.

Albert was shouting, Kasempa couldn’t tell what. But he knew what that was; he knew it was gas; he knew he’d been mousetrapped and he was a dead man. He knew it, but he refused to let it be so. He pushed savagely past his brother, reaching for the buttons. He wouldn’t breathe; he refused to breathe, though he had already inhaled some of it in the first few seconds after it broke open. Albert was falling over, falling into his path, his weight leaning on Kasempa’s chest. Kasempa gritted his teeth, pushed the heavy weight away, and got his fingers on the buttons.

If he could stop the elevator. If he could get the doors open. If he could get outof here.

He could feel the nausea welling up, feel the darkness behind it. He could feel his strength draining away. He leaned on his fingers, pressing all the buttons.

The elevator was stopping. Green kaleidoscopes were irising in around the edges of his vision. Albert had slid to the floor, his weight now leaning against Kasempa’s legs, and the strength was rushing like blood out of his legs.

The door slid open. He saw it sliding, as slow as eternity, with the last of his vision, saw the second-floor displays in semidarkness, saw the green kaleidoscope iris close over his eyes, felt his hands sliding down the smooth wall of the elevator. He tried to take a step, out and away, but all that happened was that his knee bent. It kept bending.

5

Formutesca continued to sit on the trapdoor after the elevator had stopped. He could hear the door slide open. He sat there listening, controlling himself, feeling the excitement and nervousness in him like low-voltage electricity pouring through his body. Across the way, Manado sat and stared at him. But Formutesca had no time now to think about Manado or to worry about whether or not Manado would carry his weight when the time came. He had no time now to think about what was or was not happening in the elevator, no time to think about the fact that no attempt at all had been made to push the trapdoor up. All he could think about was what was happening inside himself.

Bara Formutesca was African middle class, and he himself wasn’t entirely sure what that meant. His father was a British-trained doctor, his mother a German-trained schoolteacher, and their son was an American-trained diplomat. But what did that mean, or matter?

When he was very young, six or seven, Formutesca first learned about the two words white men in his country used when referring to black men. One was a word that meant monkey, and that referred to the tribesmen outside the cities and the workers on the big estates and the urban poor. And the other was a word that meant something like civilizedand something like evolved, and that referred to the white-collar workers and the professional men, all the Africans who had received training in European skills and who conducted their lives by European standards. In the way it was used, this second word seemed to imply also a further level of meaning, something slyly contemptible, something like castratedor tamed. It had seemed to Formutesca, as a very young child hearing those words, that between the two it was better to be a monkey than a eunuch, and ever since then he had watched himself for traces of that wildness and that brash humor that he thought of as being the essence of monkeyness.

But his parentage, his background and his training all made him tend in the other direction toward the tamed. He was too intelligent to throw all that over the average “monkey” in Dhaba had an annual income of one hundred forty-seven dollars and would die of one of several possible dreadful diseases before his fortieth birthday. But when he saw the bland, emasculated Africans in their blue-gray suits gliding along the halls at the UN as though on muffled roller-skates, he determined over and over again never to let that depersonalizationwas what it was happen to him.

Could one of them possibly be here now in his place? One of those smooth-faced amiable pets? Never.

In the dim light he saw Manado’s eyes gleaming, and he suddenly smiled because it occurred to him that he and Manado were both exceptions to the rule, and for opposite reasons. Manado was a monkey trying to be a mannequin, and Formutesca was a mannequin trying to be a monkey.

Manado whispered, “What’s that sound?”

Formutesca had heard it too. A click, and then a thudding sound, and then more clicks, and then silence. He held up his hand for Manado to be quiet and listened. Nothing happened for half a minute and then the sequence started again: the click, the thud, more clicks, silence.

“The elevator,” Formutesca said, he didn’t bother to whisper, and his words had a slight echo up and down the elevator shaft. He made hand motions, bringing the sides of his hands together to illustrate what he meant. “The doors are trying to close.”

Manado said, “What’s the matter with them?” There was something trembling in his voice.

There was very little light here. Formutesca switched on the flashlight and shone it on Manado’s face. Manado’s eyes were wide with barely controlled panic, his mouth hung open, and his whole manner was startled, on the verge of flight. He seemed to be wearing hysteria like a plastic raincoat; he could be seen through it, but dimly.

It would be no good if Manado fell apart. It would be very dangerous for Formutesca if he couldn’t rely on his second man. Quietly he said, “There’s something in their way. They can’t close because something is blocking them.”

“What?”

Carefully, Formutesca said, “Probably a body.”

Manado blinked, then shut his eyes entirely and held up a hand. “The light,” he said.

“Sorry.” Formutesca switched it off. “Shall we go see?”

Manado didn’t answer. Formutesca, peering at him, said, “Are you ready?”

“Yes. I nodded.”

“I didn’t see you.”

“I’m sorry, I should have, I didn’t realize.”

Formutesca reached out and grabbed Manado’s wrist. “Don’t fall apart, William,” he said. “We need each other.”

“I won’t. I just don’t want to be up here any more.”

“Neither do I.”

Formutesca lifted the trapdoor, keeping his head to one side of the opening. He wanted to be sure they were both unconscious before he showed himself, and he also didn’t want to be in the line of any updraft in case some of the gas was still active. He knew it was supposed to be inert by now, but he felt a kind of vague awe toward gas and didn’t trust it.

Light columned upward from the opening, but that was all. Formutesca counted to three and then looked over the edge and down into the elevator.

Both. One face up along the back, the other face down across the entrance, his upper half out on to the floor, his body keeping the door from shutting again.

Formutesca turned and nodded at Manado. “Perfect,” he whispered, and was pleased to see Manado manage a smile.

Formutesca went first, dropping lithely down into the elevator and stepping over the body in the doorway. Ahead of him was a largish room full of display cases with wooden masks lined along the far wall. Monkey faces looking at him. He felt like an initiate.

He heard Manado land behind him. Not looking back, he moved farther into the semidarkness.

Manado called softly, “Just a minute.”

Formutesca turned back just in time to see Manado slit the throat of the one in the elevator. The blood looked like red paint, too sudden and thin to be real.

Formutesca went blank. All he could do was stand there in shock and amazement. It was true they’d talked this over beforehand, he and Manado and Gonor, and decided the Kasempas couldn’t be allowed to live. They would have to be killed, all five people in the building, and their bodies buried in the basement. They’d argued that out more than a week ago knowing it would be too dangerous to everybody concerned to leave the Kasempas alive.

Still, to have it happen so fast, so casually, just a few seconds ago he’d been worrying that Manado would panic, and now, with a calm that even Parker might envy, Manado had dropped into the elevator and methodically slit a Kasempa’s throat.

In his shock and confusion Formutesca remembered when they’d found out that Balando was the one betraying them to Goma and his white mercenaries. He remembered that it was Gonor who had finally killed Balando and it was he himself who had done most of the questioning, but it was Manado who had suggested the tortures. They hadn’t had to use them; the suggestions had been enough. Manado, serious-looking, studious, studying Balando with efficient earnestness, suggesting horrors he’d heard of when he was a child.

Suddenly Formutesca knew just how many light-years he was from monkeydom. However much he might play at savagery he was a tame lamb, nothing but a tame lamb.

Cast adrift, he invoked Parker. How would Parker act now? How would that man think? What would he be? Neither monkey nor lamb, but something better than both. It seemed to Formutesca that Parker would remain cold, aloof, emotionless, that he would be like a computer, quickly but methodically solving the problem of this robbery, moving through it like a pre-programmed robot. That’s how he must be himself if he was going to survive. This was not a joke.

Manado was saying something. Formutesca looked at him, trying to understand, and saw Manado gesture with the streaked knife at the other unconscious man, the one across the doorway.

Formutesca shook his head, forcing himself to move. “No,” he said. “He’s mine. Get the guns.”

Manado nodded and stooped to wipe the knife blade on the dead man’s shirt.

Formutesca’s own knife was in a sheath attached to his belt and tucked into his right hip pocket He had felt good putting it on, felt like a commando.

He’d never killed anyone in his life.

The knife handle felt bulky and awkward in his hand. He went to one knee beside the Kasempa and then he saw he would have to turn the man over first. He put the knife on the floor, grabbed the unconscious man’s shoulder and belt, and heaved him over. He was heavy and he would go only halfway, his hips then resting against the edge of the elevator doorway where the doors were recessed. Every thirty seconds the doors tried to close, recoiling when the rubber leading edge struck the body.

Formutesca left the body lying on its side. He picked up his knife again, and with his other hand pushed back on the Kasempa’s forehead exposing his throat. He kept thinking, I can’t make a botch of this; I have to do it right the first time; I won’t be able to do it twice.

He held the knife against the throat. He could hear the man’s breathing; it sounded as though he had sinus trouble. He knew Manado was back up on top of the elevator again waiting to hand down the machine guns.

If only they could have gotten lethal gas. Gas murdered so much more cleanly.

Formutesca dragged the knife across the throat. It was very sharp, but in his desperation not to have to do it more than once he pressed as though it were dull. Blood spurted out as though he’d discovered oil, and he jumped back. It was on his trouser leg, his sleeve, his hand.

He looked at himself, looked at the knife, looked at the body. There was no more sinus breathing.

Shakily, Formutesca smiled. I did it, he thought. He wanted to say it aloud, but he resisted. He felt no more fear, no more revulsion. It was accomplished, and everything after this would be routine. He felt vast relief and a great deal of pride.

Now he knew what army men were talking about when they mentioned the baptism of fire.

Because he’d cut so deep there had been much more welling up of blood than with Manado. It was hard to get his knife clean; the handle was also smeared. He did what he could, wiped his hand on his corpse’s trouser leg, then put away the knife and went back into the elevator.

Manado’s face in the ceiling opening was the face of a brother. Formutesca smiled up at him and saw the surprise with which Manado smiled back. Then Manado lowered the guns to him and dropped back down again. Formutesca handed him one of the guns and led the way out of the elevator.

The stairs were in the middle of the building. They turned on no lights, the spill from the elevator giving them enough vague illumination as far as the staircase. From here on they would prefer darkness.

They were closer than they’d planned, the elevator having stopped on the second floor. They moved slowly enough to be silent.

As Formutesca was about to start up the stairs Manado touched his arm. Formutesca looked at him questioningly and Manado leaned close to whisper, “I’m all right now.”

Smiling at the silliness of that, Formutesca nodded.

“It was just the waiting,” Manado whispered. “But now I’ll be okay.”

6

Lucille Kasempa had been awake since the second explosion. She’d thrown a robe around her heavy body and come out to the hall to find her husband’s brother Ralph standing there wearing nothing but trousers and a pistol.

She’d said, “Where’s Patrick?”

“Went downstairs with Albert.”

The fourth brother, Morton, had come out then wearing even less than Ralph. Only the trousers, no gun. The three of them had stood around asking each other what had happened, and finally Lucille had gone down to the elevator and pressed the button to bring it up so she could go down and see for herself what was happening, but it hadn’t come.

And now she was beginning to worry. They’d been down there too long, and there wasn’t a sound.

She didn’t like this. She’d had a foreboding from the beginning, from the time Joseph had first come to her with his scheme for getting his money out of the country. “Why do it?” she’d asked him. “In Tchidanga you have everything. You’re president of the country, you have power and prestige, you’re rich. Why give it all up?”

But he’d said, “How much longer do you suppose I can hold on to this thing? If Goma doesn’t get me, Indindu will. The two of them are out there, both after my head, both after this job. Goma’s got the whites behind him, Indindu’s got the army and the diplomatic staff behind him. It’s only a matter of time a year, maybe less than a year. I’d rather be a Faruk than a Diem.”

And she was the only one he could trust. He’d said that, and she’d known it was so. But she’d left Tchidanga with a heavy heart, and it wasn’t just because she was giving up the life she loved, the social position, the importance of being the president’s sister. It was also this sense of foreboding, this fear that the scheme wouldn’t work. They were doomed; they were bringing down upon their heads a violence none of them would escape.

That was why she’d insisted on the children’s going to boarding school in Scotland. She didn’t want them anywhere around when it happened, if it happened.

If it was happening now.

She had always thought of the Blessed Virgin Mary as her special protector, her patron saint. She had always prayed to the Blessed Virgin. In her bedroom at home there was a small shrine to the Blessed Virgin. She had always come with all her troubles to the Blessed Virgin.

But how could she pray now? For a month that had troubled her. How could she ask the Blessed Virgin’s aid and intercession now? How could she say, “Help me help my brother rob his country, betray his trust, cheat the people who gave him his high office?” How could she ask that? All she could do was say, “Blessed Virgin, although you cannot condone what I am doing, still I pray you understand why I could not refuse, and for the sake of my children help us through this hour of trouble.”

Was help not to come?

She could hear nothing from downstairs. How long had it been now, ten minutes, fifteen minutes?

If only there were an intercom in this building. There certainly should be.

Maybe she would be able to hear something at the staircase. She started in that direction, and all of a sudden around the corner there she saw two men coming.

All in black.

With machine guns in their hands.

She shrieked and flung herself at the nearest door. She fell through, rolling, the door banging against the wall, and heard the sudden vicious chatter of the machine guns behind her. Ralph and Morton had been farther down the hall, exposed, vulnerable.

She had never moved so fast in her life. She rolled to her feet; she grabbed the edge of the door; she slammed it. There was a latch on the inside, and she locked it, even though she knew it could only delay the inevitable for a few more seconds.

She was in Patrick’s insomnia room. A game of solitaire was in progress on the table. A notepad there had obscure rows of numbers.

Patrick? He had gone downstairs. Those two men had come up from downstairs. Patrick could no longer be alive.

She shook her head, having no time to think about Patrick now, Patrick or anything else. She hurried to the window, flung it open to the cold damp air, and stuck her head out. “Help!” she cried. “Help!”

The fire escape was down to the right, three windows away. Even a circus performer wouldn’t be able to get there from here.

Would no one hear her? “Help! Please, help!”

No lights went on in the row of black buildings before her. Nothing happened.

The door crashed open behind her. She spun around, flattening her back against the wall beside the window. The two men came in, and one of them stood in the middle of the room while the other one came over and shut the window. He smiled crookedly at her. “Not in New York,” he said. “It is well known no one listens in New York.”

He had blood on his face, on one sleeve, on the knee of his trousers. She stared at him in horror.

He continued to smile. “You have nothing to fear from us,” he said. His voice was insinuating, like a seducer’s. “Just tell us where the diamonds are,” he said.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. My husband kept them; I don’t know what he did with them.”

He stopped smiling. Mocking her, he looked troubled. As though he really worried about her, he said, “We aren’t going to have to force you to tell us, are we? We don’t want to have to hurt you.”

She looked at the other one still in the middle of the room, his machine gun pointed at her head. He looked so young, so much more innocent than the other one. Would he stand by and let her be tortured?

He’d have to, of course. The older one must be in command here.

She wouldn’t be able to stand torture, she knew that.

It was all over now, all Joseph’s plans, just as she’d feared. Even if she didn’t tell them, even if she let them kill her without telling them, they wouldn’t have to search very hard to find the diamonds. So it was all over, no matter what she did.

The important thing was to stay alive. For her own sake, and the sake of the children.

She said, “You won’t kill me?”

“Why should we kill you?” It was the same seducer’s voice he used, and it made her know he did intend to kill her. But the other one? Would he stand for it if she cooperated, if she pleaded with him, mentioned the children, did whatever they asked?

She said, “Down to the right. The last room on the left. In the closet. There’s a pair of overshoes in there.”

“In the overshoes?”

She nodded. “In two cloth bags inside the overshoes.”

He said to the younger one, “Watch her,” and left the room.

She looked at the younger one. Wasn’t his face familiar? She felt as though she’d seen him somewhere. At some diplomatic function perhaps, or some social occasion in Tchidanga.

She tried to smile at him, but it didn’t work very well. She said, “You don’t have to kill me, you know. I won’t cause you any trouble.”

He didn’t say anything, but she thought she detected sympathy in his expression. She said, “I have three children, you know. They’re all I care about, not the diamonds or politics or anything else. I wouldn’t want to leave them alone, with no one. So you don’t have to kill me, you can leave me here, and I promise you I’ll never”

The other one came back in. He nodded to the younger one and patted the pocket of his jacket. “Got them,” he said. He turned and looked at Lucille and said, “I’m sorry.”

Looking at him, meeting his eye, she realized with a shock that he wassorry. It wasn’t mockery after all; he was deeply troubled by what he was doing here tonight.

Too late she understood she’d made her appeal to the wrong one.

7

Aaron Marten stood at the window looking out over Riverside Drive and the Hudson toward New Jersey. A few lights defined buildings over there even at this hour of the morning.

Jock Daask said, “It’s the woman I’m thinking about.”

“I’m sure you are,” Bob Quilp said.

Marten listened to the voices behind him and looked at the lights across the river.

Jock was saying, “How do we know she isn’t in trouble with the police herself? She’s traveling with a wanted man; they could be after her, too. And here we are giving her to them.”

Still facing New Jersey, Marten said, “Can’t be helped. We warned them to stay out of it.”

Bob said sarcastically, “You could go on up there tomorrow and untie her if you wanted. Untie her legs, anyway.”

Marten did look around then, frowning at Bob. “That will be enough of that,” he said.

Bob shrugged, a sardonic smile on his face. “Just trying to be helpful.”

Jock came walking across the room toward Marten, a pleading expression on his face. “Aaron,” he said, “what difference does it make? Why can’twe let him live? We’ll be in Africa, for heaven’s sake. He’ll have his woman back. Why kill him?”

Marten shrugged. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder for him,” he said. “It’s as simple as that.”

Bob said, “He must have impressed you tonight.”

“He did.”

Jock said, “Why? Why is it all different now? Why change the plans at all?”

“I don’t want him alive,” Marten said, and turned his back and looked out at the river again.

Was this the first time in his life he had actively desired the death of another man? Marten thought it was. There had been other moments when the death of this one or that one, known or anonymous, was necessary to the completion of something else that Marten wanted, but this was the first time that the death itself was the goal.

He thought it was Parker’s eyes, or perhaps the bone structure of his face. He didn’t know what it was exactly, but talking with Parker tonight, listening to his voice, looking at his eyes, watching him move, he understood that Parker was the most dangerous man he had ever met, and that he had made himself Parker’s enemy, and that he would not sleep securely at night so long as Parker was still alive. He had had the irrational urge to pull out his pistol and kill Parker right then, almost as a nervous tic, but he had controlled it. Not until afterwards, he had thought, not until we have the diamonds. We need him alive until we have the diamonds.

But afterwards he must die.

Bob broke the silence behind him at last, saying, “Shouldn’t we be on our way?”

Marten turned around again. The clock on the mantel said not quite two fifty. “Not yet,” he said. “We don’t want to be there too early.”

“I don’t understand that,” Bob said. “We’d do better to be there ahead of them, that’s what I say.”

Marten shook his head. “We wouldn’t. Parker was right about that. If we get there first, we’re likely to leave traces when we break in. Then Gonor and the others come along, they see marks on the door or whatever, and they don’t come in at all.”

Bob shook his head and started to pace around the room. “I don’t trust Parker,” he said. “I don’t like doing things to hissuggestions.”

“Why not?” Marten spread his hands, saying, “If there’s something I’m not seeing, Bob, I’m willing to listen.”

Bob made an angry gesture and kept pacing.

“Parker wantsto tell us the truth,” Marten said. “He wantsus to get the diamonds, because he wants his woman back. After that he may be dangerous, but not before.”

“I don’t trust him.”

“Bob, there’s nothing he can do to us. There’s no way he can get at us. He doesn’t know where the farm is and he doesn’t know about this apartment. He can’t find his woman without our help and he can’t find us.”

Jock said doubtfully, watching Bob pace back and forth, “But what if he’s guessed we mean to kill him?”

“Then he wouldn’t tell us anything. It doesn’t do him any good to send us on a wild-goose chase. Say this museum isn’twhere they’re taking the diamonds. Say we go there at five o’clock and break in and the place is empty. What good does that do him?”

“He might have warned the police,” Bob said. “It could be a trap.”

Marten shook his head. “What good does it do him? He wants his woman. If we don’t get the diamonds we don’t call him; we don’t tell him where she is. Believe me, he’s sitting in his hotel room right now next to the phone waiting for us to call, hoping we don’t lose out to Gonor and his people.”

“It makes sense,” Bob said grudgingly. “It’s smooth and it’s easy and it makes sense. But I’ve just got a feeling.”

“I hope you’re wrong.” Marten told him. “I think you are. I don’t think Parker is stupid, and it would be stupid for him to try to double-cross us. We hold all the cards.”

Bob shrugged. “I hope you’re right,” he said.

8

Until he heard the explosions from inside the museum, Gonor sat quietly in the truck smoking his pipe, watching the rare automobile drive by, once watching a police car roll slowly down the block without its occupants appearing to take any interest in the truck, watching the silent and empty street, thinking about the past and the future, thinking about Major Indindu and the future of Dhaba and thinking about the future of himself.

The first explosion, muffled but unmistakable, broke into his calm and reflective mood, making him tense and nervous, and the second explosion made him far too jittery to sit still.

He knew he shouldn’t leave the truck. If something went wrong inside the museum, Formutesca and Manado would come out at a dead run expecting him to be in the truck ready to start the engine and get them away from there. But he couldn’t help it; he had to move. He had to get out and stand and move and walk around, even if only for a minute or two.

He left the pipe on the dashboard and stepped out on to the sidewalk. The air was damply cold with a chill that went straight to the bone, but he didn’t mind. It was too pleasant to stretch his legs, to move around.

He looked at the museum and noticed lights on now on the top floor. There seemed to be no signs of trouble, so he started to walk. He walked up toward Park Avenue halfway to the corner and was about to turn and go back, when he noticed the car parked across the street. Was that paleness in there a white face?

Maybe it was Parker come back after all to be sure things were going well. But no, it couldn’t be. That wasn’t the way Parker did things.

So who was it? Someone watching, intending to steal the diamonds once they were brought out of the building?

It was too much of a coincidence, someone’s waiting in a car on this block at this hour in the morning. It had to be somebody involved, somebody after the diamonds. Hoskins maybe, or one of Goma’s men.

Gonor turned away, acting as though he’d noticed nothing. He walked back toward the truck and then past it and on down to the corner. Then, hurrying, he crossed the street to the right and went down Lexington Avenue to Thirty-seventh Street and so around the block, coming at the car from behind. He moved cautiously on the dark street, his pistol in his hand now held against his side out of sight, and when he reached the car he was surprised to find it empty.

Had he made a mistake before? Had there been no one in the car at all?

He heard a tiny scraping sound behind him and spun, and someone standing there poked a hard finger into his stomach. He saw it was Hoskins, his face distorted with strain, and then the hard finger exploded in his stomach and he never knew anything again.

9

Hoskins stepped back quickly and watched Gonor fall against the side of the car and then crumple and drop to the ground. So it’s going to be bloodshed, is it? Hoskins thought, as though the decision had belonged to someone else but he had expected it. Waiting around, all this time, but knowing that sooner or later it would have to start.

After Walker had done that strong-arm business the other night, hanging him out the window, Hoskins had decided the time had come to play things a whole lot cagier. There were too many hard cases involved, and if Will Hoskins was going to come out of this with the boodle in hand and his head on his shoulders, it was obvious he was going to have to play a quiet and cautious game.

Quiet and cautious, that’s the ticket. Let the hard cases flex their muscles and push each other around. Old Will Hoskins, watching it all from the background, knowing a little bit more than any one of them about what all of them were up to, would know when to move in, when to make that one effective move that would bring him home the bacon and leave the strong-arm boys with egg on their faces.

For himself, Will Hoskins didn’t like the hard cases. Brawn instead of brains, violence instead of good planning. He didn’t like them, didn’t trust them, didn’t want to have anything to do with them. He’d avoided them all his life, and if this boodle weren’t so damned big he’d have avoided them this time as well.

Particularly after Walker had done that hanging-out-the-window trick. Marten and his playmates had acted rough and mean, but they didn’t hold a candle to Walker.

If that was his name, which Hoskins doubted. He was calling himself Lynch this time in town, and that was probably another flag. But whatever he called himself and whatever his real name, Hoskins wanted nothing to do with him. He was just as pleased, he told himself, that Walker wouldn’tcome in with him. He was better off playing a lone hand. He’d played a lone hand before, though never with strong-arm types involved.

Wilfred Hoskins had worked a lot of non-violent rackets in the course of his life, everything from hustling bridge on Long Island to roping for a wire store in Houston. He’d never turned down a chance to wangle a dollar in his life, and when that spade Gonor showed up with his burglary night-school idea, Hoskins immediately saw there was a way in there to promote for himself the sweetest piece of cake of his lifetime. And he still thought so.

He’d been keeping track of Walker since the window episode, keeping well out of Walker’s sight but keeping pretty close tabs on him just the same, and when he and Gonor spent almost an hour in that African museum this afternoon he’d told himself it had to mean something. They weren’t in that place for fun. When Walker and Gonor split after the museum, it was Walker that Hoskins followed back to his hotel. And then nothing happened for so long that Hoskins was about ready to call it a night, when there was Walker again, coming out of the elevator, coat on, Aaron Marten at his side.

It was nine o’clock. Hoskins watched the two of them, followed them from the hotel, saw them walk a block and a half and then go into a German restaurant on Forty-sixth Street, saw them sit down to dinner together, and then he knew all he needed to know.

First, Walker hadn’t wanted to throw in with Hoskins because he’d already thrown in with Marten and that crowd. Birds of a feather, of course. And no doubt Walker, a violent man himself, had been impressed by the tough manner of Marten and his friends.

But second, the more important, if Walker and Marten were meeting like this it could only mean one thing: that the robbery was set for tonight. And if the robbery was going to be tonight, after Walker and Gonor had spent this afternoon at that museum, then the museum was where the robbery would take place. That had to be where the Kasempa brothers were hiding out.

It all tied together. The only question was, what was Hoskins going to do about it?

In a way, he knew that what he should do about it was nothing. He should clear out of this affair right now; it wasn’t where he belonged. Walker, Marten, Gonor, the Kasempas they were all of them men of violence, and he was a man of reason. And they were all banded into groups; he was the only lone agent. If he were sensible, he’d go straight back to Los Angeles tonight.

But he couldn’t do it. There was too much money at stake; it was too great an opportunity. If he could bring it off he’d be on easy street the rest of his life.

He didn’t stick around the restaurant once Walker and Marten had settled themselves. He hurried to Sixth Avenue where his rented Ford was waiting in a parking garage, got it out, and drove down to East Thirty-eighth Street. He drove down that block once, slowly, and there were lights in the top-floor windows of the museum. So he’d been right.

He went around the block, came back, and parked near the corner of Park Avenue and on the opposite side of the street from the museum. He cut the engine, adjusted himself comfortably, and waited to see what would happen.

For a long while nothing at all happened, and when the truck parked across the street, in front of the museum, Hoskins at first thought that meant nothing, too. But he kept watching the truck and he saw that it had turned out its lights and there was no more puff of white exhaust at the back, and yet no one had gotten out of it. He didn’t understand what that meant, but he was sure it had something to do with Walker and Gonor and the diamonds, and when eventually he saw Gonor’s two young partners crawl out of the back of the truck and carry a lot of stuff into the building next door to the museum he’d known his hunch had paid off.

Nothing happened then for a long while until he heard a muffled sound like thum. It was more concussion than sound, and if he hadn’t had his window open a little to let out the cigarette smoke he wouldn’t have heard it at all. He frowned out through the windshield, wondering what it meant or if it had anything to do with the robbery, and then he saw the top floor of the museum starting to light up again, lights first in one window, then in two, then in all. And another thum.

Should he move now? Something was happening over there. Should he make his move or should he go on waiting and watching? Move here, or follow the truck and see where the diamonds went next?

Before he’d decided, the curb-side door of the truck opened. He couldn’t see it from where he was, but he saw through the window on the near side that the interior light had lit. He waited and watched, and the light went out, meaning the door had shut over there, and a few seconds later he saw Gonor walking on the sidewalk.

Strolling along up toward Park Avenue as though just out for an evening’s walk, taking the air, nothing on his mind at all. With those yellow lights gleaming in the top floor of the museum.

Hoskins watched, and he knew when Gonor saw him. He’d hoped it was dark enough in the car here, but Gonor’s halted posture was unmistakable. He saw that break in the stride, then saw Gonor try to pick it up again, try to act as though he hadn’t seen a thing. But Hoskins was sensitive to nuances where his own safety was concerned, and he knew he’d been seen.

He watched Gonor walk back toward the truck, and he wondered what he should do now. Maybe start the engine, leave the lights off, make a sudden dash for it. Wait till the light down at the corner there had been green for a while, just before it was ready to change.

But Gonor didn’t stop at the truck. What was he up to? Hoskins watched him walk all the way down to the corner, then cut across and disappear down Lexington Avenue, and he thought: Oh-ho, circling my flank. He got out of the rented car at once and walked up to the side entrance of the church on the corner and stood in the darkness there, and in a little while he saw Gonor walk by and go down and look in the car.

Hoskins followed him, walking directly up behind him, his own gun in his hand, and he didn’t plan what he was going to do or think about what he was going to do. He just moved forward. And when Gonor spun around and stared at him it was the most natural thing in the world to push the gun forward and pull the trigger.

So it was all going to work out after all. Gonor was lying on the curb beside the car, so Hoskins rolled him into the gutter and then shoved him partway under the car where he would be less likely to be seen. Then he went down to the truck, saw that it was indeed empty, and got into it himself. Those other black boys would be getting a surprise when they came out.

But it was a longer wait than he’d anticipated, nearly twenty minutes, and now that he’d actually done something this inactivity was hard to take, which is why he made his error. He saw the museum door open and then shut, he saw the two black figures hurry down the walk and open the gate and start across the sidewalk toward him, and he fired about three seconds too soon.

Not too soon to hit; he shot twice, and the one he’d aimed at flipped backwards and didn’t move after he landed. But the other one had time to dive for cover, and the cover of the iron fence was close enough, and he managed to leap over it before Hoskins could get a good bead on him. Hoskins fired anyway, and the shot pinged away in a ricochet.

Damn! Hoskins shoved the truck door open, knowing he had to get over there and finish that one off before he could get himself organized, and he jumped out on to the sidewalk, took two steps, and a voice called, “Hoskins!”

He turned his head, and to the left along the sidewalk was Parker running toward him. In a panic of haste, Hoskins tried to turn around, or point the gun at Parker, or run away, or keeping going the way he’d been moving, all the contradictory impulses slowing him long enough for Parker to stop running and raise his arm.

Hoskins tried to duck the bullet.