Honour Among Thieves Part 25

'So what did you study?' asked Scott.

'A lot of Fleming, a little of Joyce, with a few rare moments devoted to Plato and Aristotle, but I fear not enough to engage the attention of any member of the board of examiners.'

"And how is the Declaration coming on?' asked Dexter, as if he hadn't been following the conversation.

A stickler for the work ethic is our Mr Hutchins, Professor,' said Dollar Bill as a bowl of soup was placed in front of him. 'Mind you, he is a man who would rely on logic to see him through. However, as there is no such thing in life as a free meal, I will attempt to answer my jailer's question. Today, I completed the text as originally written by Timothy Matlock, a.s.sistant to the Secretary of Congress.

It took him seventeen hours you know. I fear it has taken me rather longer/ 'And how long do you think it will take you to finish the names?' pressed Dexter.'You are worse than Pope Julius II, forever demanding of Michelangelo how long it would take him to finish the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel,' said Dollar Bill as the butler removed the soup bowls.

'The names,' demanded Dexter. 'The names.'

'Oh, impatient and unsubtle man.'

'Shaw,' said Scott.

'I grow to like you more by the minute,' said Dollar Bill.

'The names,' repeated Dexter as Charles placed an Irish stew on the table. Dollar Bill immediately helped himself.

'Now I see why you are the Deputy Director,' said Dollar Bill. 'Do you not realise, man, that there are fifty-six names on the original doc.u.ment, each one of them a work of art in itself? Let me demonstrate to you, if I may. Paper, please, Charles. I require paper.'

The butler took a pad that lay next to the telephone and placed it by O'Reilly's side. Dollar Bill removed a pen from his inside pocket and began to scribble.

He showed his two dinner companions what he had written: 'Mr O'Reilly may have the unrestricted use of the company helicopter whenever he wishes.'

'What does that prove?' asked Dexter.

'Patience, Mr Hutchins, patience,' said Dollar Bill, as he retrieved the piece of paper and signed it first with the signature of Dexter Hutchins, and then, changing his pen, wrote 'Scott Bradley'.

Once again he allowed them to study his efforts.

'But how...?' said Scott.

'In your case, Professor, it was easy. All I needed was the visitors' book.'

'But I didn't sign the visitors' book,' said Dexter.

'I confess it would be a strange thing for you to do when you are the Deputy Director,' said Dollar Bill, 'but, in your case nothing would surprise me. However, Mr Hutchins, you do have the infuriating habit of signing and dating the inside cover of any book you have purchased recently. I suspect in the case of first editions it will be the nearest you get to posterity.' He paused. 'But enough of this idle banter. You can both see for yourself the task I face.' Without warning, Dollar Bill folded his napkin, rose from the table leaving his half-finished stew, and walked out of the room. His companions jumped up and quickly followed him across to the west wing without another word being spoken. After they had climbed a small flight of stone steps they entered DollarBill's makes.h.i.+ft study.

On an architect's drafting board below a bright light rested the parchment. Both men walked across the room, stood over the board and studied the completed script. It had been inscribed above a large empty s.p.a.ce covered in tiny pencil crosses that awaited the fifty-six signatures.

Scott stared in admiration at the work.

'But why didn't you ...'

'Take up a proper occupation?' asked Dollar Bill, antic.i.p.ating the question. 'And have ended up as a schoolmaster in Wexford, or perhaps have climbed to the dizzy heights of being a councillor in Dublin? No, sir, I would prefer the odd stint in jail rather than be considered by my fellow men as mediocre.'

'How many days before you have to leave us, young man?'

Dexter Hutchins asked Scott.

'Kratz phoned this afternoon,' Scott replied, turning to face the Deputy Director. 'He says they caught the Trelleborg-Sa.s.snitz ferry last night. They're now heading south, hoping to cross the Bosphorus by Monday morning.'

'Which means they should be at the border with Iraq by next Wednesday.'

'The perfect time of year to be sailing the Bosphorus,'

said Dollar Bill. 'Especially if you hope to meet a rather remarkable girl when you reach the other side,' he added, looking up at Scott. 'So, I'd better have the Declaration finished by Monday, hadn't I, Professor?'

'At the latest,' said Hutchins as Scott stared down at the little Irishman.

when AL obaydi ARRIVED back in Paris he collected his bags from the twenty-four-hour storage depot, then joined the queue for a taxi.

He gave the driver an address, without saying it was the Iraqi annexe to the Jordanian Emba.s.sy - one of the tips in Miss Saib's 'do's and don'ts' in Paris. He hadn't warned the staff at the emba.s.sy that he would be arriving that day. He wasn't officially due to take up his appointment for another fortnight, and he would have gone straight on to Jordan that evening if there had been a connecting flight. Once he had realised who Mr Riffat was, he knew he would have to get back to Baghdad as quickly as possible. By reporting direct to the Foreign Minister, he would have gone through the correct channels. This would protect his position, while at the same time guaranteeing that the President knew exactly who wasresponsible for alerting him to a possible attempt on his life, and which Amba.s.sador, however closely related, had left several stones unturned.

The taxi dropped Al Obaydi outside the annexe to the emba.s.sy in Neuilly. He pulled his cases out of the back without any help from the driver, who remained seated obstinately behind the wheel of his car.

The emba.s.sy front door opened just an inch, and was then flung wide, and a man of about forty came running down the steps towards him, followed by two girls and a younger man.

'Excellency, Excellency,' the first man exclaimed. 'I am sorry, you must forgive me, we had no idea you were coming.'

The younger man grabbed the two large cases and the girls took the remaining three between them.

Al Obaydi was not surprised to learn that the first man down the steps was Abdul Kanuk.

'We were told you would be arriving in two weeks' time, Excellency. We thought you were still in Baghdad. I hope you will not feel we have been discourteous.'

Al Obaydi made no attempt to interrupt the non-stop flow of sycophancy that came pouring out, feeling the man must eventually run out of steam. In any case, Kanuk was not a man to get on the wrong side of on his first day.

'Would Your Excellency like a quick tour of our quarters while the maid unpacks your bags?'

As there were questions Al Obaydi felt only this man could answer, he took advantage of the offer. Not only did he get the guided tour from the Chief Administrator, but he was also subjected to a stream of uninterrupted gossip. He stopped listening after only a few minutes; he had far more important things on his mind. He soon longed to be shown to his own room and left alone to be given a chance to think. The first flight to Jordan was not until the next morning, and he needed to prepare in his mind how he would present his findings to the Foreign Minister.

It was while he was being shown round what would shortly be his office looking out over a Paris that was turning from the half-light of dusk to the artificial light of night, that the Administrator said something Al Obaydi didn't quite catch. He felt he should have been paying closer attention.

'I'm sorry to say that your secretary is on holiday, Excellency. Like the rest of us, Miss Ahmed wasn't expecting you for another fortnight. I know she had planned to be backin Paris a week ahead of you, so that she would have everything ready by the time you arrived.'

'It's not a problem,' said Al Obaydi.

'Of course, you'll know Miss Saib, the Deputy Foreign Minister's secretary?'

'I came across Miss Saib when I was in Baghdad,' replied Al Obaydi.

The Chief Administrator nodded, and seemed to hesitate for a moment.

'I think I'll have a rest before dinner,' the Amba.s.sador said, taking advantage of the temporary halt in an otherwise unending flow.

'I'll have something sent up to your room, Excellency.

Would eight suit you?'

'Thank you,' said Al Obaydi, in an attempt to put an end to the conversation.

'Shall I place your pa.s.sport and tickets in the safe, as I always did for the previous Amba.s.sador?'

'A good idea,' said Al Obaydi, delighted to have at last found a way of getting rid of the Chief Administrator.

Scott put the phone down and turned to face Dexter Hutchins, who was leaning back in the large leather chair at his desk, his hands clasped behind his head and a questioning look on his face.

'So where are they?' asked Dexter.

'Kratz wouldn't give me the exact location, for obvious reasons, but at his current rate of progress he feels confident they'll reach the Jordanian border within the next three days.'

'Then let's pray that the Iraqi Ministry of Industry is as inefficient as our experts keep telling us it is. If so, the advantage should be with us for at least a few more days.

After all, we did move the moment sanctions were lifted, and until you showed up in Kalmar, Pedersson hadn't heard a peep out of anyone for the past two years.'

'I agree. But I worry that Pedersson might be the one weak link in Kratz's chain.'

'If you're going to take these sorts of risks, no plan can ever be absolutely watertight,' said Dexter.

Scott nodded.

'And if Kratz is less than three days from the border, you'll have to catch a flight for Amman on Monday night, a.s.suming Mr O'Reilly has finished his signatures by then.'

'I don't think that's a problem any longer,' said Scott.'Why? He still had a lot of names to copy when I last looked at the parchment.'

'It can't be that many,' said Scott, 'because Mr Mendelssohn flew in from Was.h.i.+ngton this morning in order to pa.s.s his judgement, and that seems to be the only opinion Bill is interested in.'

'Then let's go and see for ourselves,' said Dexter as he swung himself up out of his chair.

As they left the office and made their way down the corridor, Dexter asked, 'And how's Bertha's bible coming along? I turned a few pages of the introduction this morning and couldn't begin to get a grasp of why the bulbs turn from red to green.'

'Only one man knows Madame Bertha more intimately than I do, and at this moment he's pining away in Scandinavia,' said Scott as they climbed the stone steps to Dollar Bill's private room.

'I also hear that Charles has designed a special pair of trousers for you,' Dexter said.

'And they're a perfect fit,' replied Scott with a smile.

As they reached the top of the steps, Dexter was about to barge in when Scott put an arm on his shoulder.

'Perhaps we should knock? He might be .. .'

'Next you'll be wanting me to call him "sir".'

Scott grinned as Dexter knocked quietly, and when there was no reply, eased the door open. He crept in to see Mendelssohn stooping over the parchment, magnifying gla.s.s in hand.

'Benjamin Franklin, John Morton and George Clymer,'

muttered the Conservator.

'I had a lot of trouble with Clymer,' said Dollar Bill, who was looking out of the window over the bay. 'It was the d.a.m.n man's squiggles, which I had to complete in one flow.

You'll find a couple of hundred of them in the waste-paper basket.'

'May we approach the bench?' asked Dexter. Dollar Bill turned and waved them in.

'Good afternoon, Mr Mendelssohn. I'm Dexter Hutchins, Deputy Director of the CIA.'

'Could you possibly be anything else?' asked Dollar Bill.

Dexter ignored the comment and asked Mendelssohn, 'What's your judgement, sir?'

Dollar Bill continued to stare out of the window.

'It's every bit as good as the copy we currently have ondisplay at the National Archives.'

'You are most generous, sir,' said Dollar Bill, who turned round to face them.

'But I don't understand why you have spelt the word 'British" correctly^ and not with two ts as it was on the original,' said Mendelssohn, returning his attention to the doc.u.ment.

'There are two reasons for that,' said Dollar Bill as six suspicious eyes stared back at him. 'First, if the exchange is carried out successfully, Saddam will not be able to claim he still has his hands on the original.'

'Clever,' said Scott.

'And second?' asked Dexter, who remained suspicious of the little Irishman's motives.

'It will stop the Professor from bringing back this copy and trying to pa.s.s it off as the original.'

Scott laughed. 'You always think like a criminal,' he said.

'And you'd better be thinking like one yourself over the next few days, if you're going to get the better of Saddam Hussein,' said Dollar Bill as Charles entered the room, carrying a pint of Guinness on a silver tray.

Dollar Bill thanked Charles, removed his reward from the tray and walked to the far side of the room before taking the first sip.

'May I ask...?' began Scott.

'I once spilt the blessed nectar all over a hundred-dollar etching that I had spent some three months preparing.'

'So what did you do then?' asked Scott.

'I fear that I settled for second best, which caused me to end up in the slammer for another five years.' Even Dexter joined in the laughter. 'However, on this occasion I raise my gla.s.s to Matthew Thornton, the final signatory on the doc.u.ment. I wish him good health wherever he is, despite the d.a.m.n man's ts.'

'So, am I able to take the masterpiece away now?' asked Scott.

'Not yet, young man,' said Dollar Bill. 'I fear you must suffer another evening of my company,' he added before placing his drink on the window ledge and returning to the doc.u.ment. 'You see, the one problem I have been fighting is time. In Mr Mendelssohn's judgement, the parchment has an 1830s feel about it. Am I right, sir?'

The Conservator nodded, and raised his arms as ifapologising for daring to mention such a slight blemish.