imagination; he had hired an all-night maid to be his latenight eyes inside. It was an able move, but flawed.
Such an individual was too limited, too easily removed; she could be called away by the front desk. A guest had had an accident, a burning cigarette, an overturned pitcher of water. Too limited. And with a greater flaw.
In the morning she would go off duty. And when she did, she would be summoned by a guest across the hall.
Scofield was about to go back to his basin when he heard the commotion; he looked once more through the glass circle.
The well-dressed woman had walked out of the room, her overnight case in her hand. The maid stood in the doorway. Scofield could hear the decoy's words.
"Tell him to go to hell!" shouted the woman. "He's a fucking nut, dear.
This whole godamn place is filled with nuts!9, The maid watched in silence as the woman walked rapidly down the corridor. Then she closed the door, remaining inside.
ne matronly looking maid had been paid well; she would be paid better in the morning by a guest across the hall. The negotiations would begin quickly the second she stepped out of the suite.
The string was drawing tighter, everything was patience now. And staying awake.
Taleniekov walked the streets, aware that his legs were close to buckling, struggling to stay alert and avoid colliding with the crowds on the sidewalk. He played mental games to keep his concentration alive, counting footsteps and cracks in the pavement and blocks between telephone booths. The radios could not be used any longer; the citizen-bands were filled with babble. He cursed the fact that there had not been time to purchase more sophisticated equipment. But he never thought it could possibly go on so long! Madness!
It was twenty minutes past eleven in the morning, the city of Washington vibrating, people rushing, automobiles and buses clogging the streets... and still the insane telephone calls kept coming to the suite at the hotel on Nebraska Avenue.
Brandon Scofield, please. It's urgent that I speak with him.
Insanityl What was Scofield doing? Where was he? Where were his intermediaries?
Only the old woman remained in the hotel. The whore had revolted, the two men long since exhausted, their presence merely embarrassing, accomplishing nothing. The woman stayed in the suite, getting what rest she could between the maddening telephone calls, relaying every word spoken by the caller. A female with a pronounced "foreign" accent, probably French, never staying on the line more than fifteen seconds, unable to be drawn out and very abrupt. She was either a professional, or being instructed by a professional; there could be no tracing the number or the location of the calls.
Chapter Seven
Vasili approached the phone booth fifty yards north of the hotel's entrance on the opposite side of the street. It was the fourth call he had made from this particular booth, and he had memorized the graffiti and the odd numbers scratched on the gray metal of the edge. He walked in, pulled the glass door shut, and inserted a coin; the tone hummed in his car and he reached for the dial.
Praguel His eyes were playing tricks on himl Across Nebraska Avenue a man got out of a taxi and stood on the pavement looking down the street toward the hotel. He knew that man!
At least, he knew the face. And it was Praguel The man had a history of violence, both political and nonpolitical. His police record was filled with assaults, thefts, and unproven homicides, his years in prison nearer ten than five. He had worked against the state more for profit than for ideology; he had been well paid by the Americans. His firing arm was good, his knife better.
That he was in Washington and less than fifty yards from this particular hotel could only mean he had a connection with Scofield. Yet there was no sense in the connection! Beowulf Agate had scores of men and women he could call upon for help in dozens of cities, but he would not call on someone from Europe now, and he certainly would not call on this man; the streak of sadism was conceivably unmanageable. Why was he here? Who had summoned him?
Who had sent him? And were there others?
But it was the why that burned into Taleniekov's brain. It was profoundly disturbing. Beyond the fact that the Bern-Washington depot had been revealed-undoubtedly, unwittingly by Scofield himself-someone knowing it had reached Prague for a walking gun known