CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Professor Arne Nordberg had already changed his clothes twice, although neither change had in any way improved his appearance. He had, at first, put on his best suit and most colorful shirt and cravat. Then, sweating in the heavy heat of the morning and the stuffy apartment, he had decided that comfort was the order of the day. After all, scientists and academicians, like writers and sportsmen, were known for their disregard for fashion. It added to their bohemian image. But the sweater he had pulled on to complement his slacks was badly frayed, and the slacks themselves still had a food stain on them he had tried to remove without success. In desperation he pulled on the pants of his best suit again, promising himself the finest wardrobe known to man once the money for the treasure was in his hands, and was just pulling on his one clean sports shirt when the doorbell rang. He pressed the button releasing the latch on the street door three floors down, tucked in his shirt, slipped his bare feet into a pair of sneakers, and considered himself in the mirror. Not bad, he thought with a smile; a fitting co-author of a paper with Dr. Gregor Kovpak of the famous Hermitage Museum. My Lord, he thought, winking at his image in the glass, how things had changed in a few months!

He hurried to the door and held it open, listening to his guest coming up the steps, and then frowned slightly as two figures instead of one appeared at the next lower landing, turning the corner to begin the final climb. One of the figures was a woman and as she raised her head to peer up the stairs, Nordberg saw that she was extraordinarily beautiful, and he was glad he had worn the clean shirt and proper pants. His eyes automatically went to the woman’s cleavage, and he felt the familiar stirring in his groin. If this was Kovpak’s woman, lucky Kovpak! God, to sleep with a woman like that, to run his hands at will over that lush body! He wet his lips at the salacious thought, and then suddenly felt a little shock as he recognized her. It was Dr. Ruth McVeigh of the Metropolitan Museum in New York! Her picture had certainly been in the newpapers often enough during that conference in London! All thoughts of sex disappeared, leaving only the frightening fact that here were Dr. Kovpak and Dr. McVeigh, two people vitally interested in the Schliemann treasure. He had a cold feeling that this meeting had nothing to do with dinosaurs, big or small. Nor did history play much part in it. Still, how could anyone possibly connect him with the Schliemann treasure? There was absolutely no way anyone could know! No, it simply had to be a coincidence that Dr. Kovpak wished to speak with him, and that Dr. McVeigh was along. He forced a smile of welcome onto his lips and ushered his guests into the living room of the apartment, for once more interested in the true reason for this strange visit than in the appearance of the shoddy apartment before important people.

“Dr. Kovpak? And you are Dr. McVeigh. I recognized you from your pictures in the papers. This is a very great honor.” He looked from one to the other inquiringly. “Can I get you some coffee?”

“No,” Ruth McVeigh said abruptly, and looked at him with open distaste. It was part of her strategy to undermine any strengths the man might have before he could build any defenses. Nordberg’s smile froze on his face. There was no doubt that her unfriendly tone, combined with her look of patent dislike meant that this was far from a friendly visit. Then they had to have come to talk about the treasure. But that was impossible! There was absolutely no way they could connect him with the Schliemann gold! Still, he had to find out. He forced himself to shrug politely, as if taking her refusal merely to mean they already had taken breakfast, and gestured toward the sofa. Ruth sat down while Gregor moved about the room looking at the copies of paintings on the wall. Nordberg properly interpreted this to indicate that Ruth McVeigh was the spokesman, and sat down across from her. He tried to look insouciant, but his heart was beating rapidly. He glanced over his shoulder at Gregor Kovpak, still circling the room slowly.

“About that dinosaur you wished to discuss—”

“Let’s not waste any time,” Ruth said, rudely interrupting him, and the professor now knew for a certainty that the subject was the Schliemann treasure. He tried to look at her with polite inquiry, as if requesting clarification for her desire not to waste time, or for her unfriendly attitude. “And don’t look at me as if you didn’t know what I was talking about,” she went on, determined not to ease the pressure on the man for a moment. “You have the Schliemann treasure and we know it. Your cousin, Knud Christensen, told us all about it. He found it while diving and you bought it from him—stole it would be more accurate—for a thousand kroner. Well?”

Now that his worst fears had been realized, Professor Nordberg forced himself not to panic. Somehow this woman had located Christensen, God alone knew how, and the stupid oaf had talked. He had not drunk the doctored whiskey! God, why had he bought something expensive? A cheap aquavit would have been gone long since, and the talkative dim-witted farmer with it! Still, it was obvious the two knew nothing of Count Lindgren and the true location of the treasure. The thought brought instant sanity. He looked at Ruth McVeigh with a look of startled incredulity, as if he could not believe his ears.

“I beg your pardon?”

Ruth treated this doubt with the scorn it deserved. “Professor, please do not try to look innocent. You heard me quite well, and you understood exactly what I was saying. You have the Schliemann treasure, and if you don’t want to spend a good part of the rest of your life in prison, you’ll admit it and we can go on from there.”

Nordberg stared at her with a perplexed frown. “How can I admit something that isn’t true?”

“It’s perfectly true and you know it! If you’ll simply admit it, you can stand to gain from it.”

Nordberg sighed in frustration. “My dear Dr. McVeigh, obviously I should like to gain from anything I can, but all this nonsense—if you’ll forgive me—about the Schliemann treasure is quite puzzling. I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage—”

“I have you at a far greater disadvantage than you think,” Ruth said flatly. “Let me put it to you in simple words. You have the Schliemann treasure and I mean to have it. I will guarantee you that the Metropolitan Museum will pay you a hundred thousand dollars for it. That’s the equivalent of over half a million Danish kroner. If you accept my offer, I will see that you are paid in cash and that nobody beyond the three of us in this room will ever hear of it. If you refuse, then I’ll have no choice but to go to the authorities and see that you are arrested. Not only for attempted extortion—because that’s all this auction of yours amounts to—but also for failing to report the discovery and possession of a treasure found in Danish waters. Sovereign states frown on that sort of silence. So,” Ruth finished evenly, “not only will you lose the hundred thousand dollars, the half million kroner, but you’ll have a long time in prison in which to remember how foolish you were to refuse.”

Nordberg had been listening to all this with a look of total disbelief on his pudgy face.

“You look like Dr. McVeigh,” he said slowly, almost as if he were speaking to himself, “or at least like the newspaper photographs of her, which is possibly what turned your head. Whoever you are, you’re a sick woman.” He raised his voice slightly, as if now admitting the woman into the conversation. “Madame, I have no idea of what you are speaking. Of course I have heard of the Schliemann treasure and the fact that it is being auctioned off by someone—who in the world has not? But the idea that that person would be me, is absurd. It’s laughable.” He shook his head in amazement that any sane person could entertain such a ludicrous thought, and then obviously decided that he had had enough of this tiresome person. “I think it would be better if you were to leave—”

Ruth looked at him triumphantly. “And how do you explain Knud Christensen and the story he told us?”

“Ah, yes. The story Knud Christensen told you. I never met my cousin Knud Christensen in my life. Our mothers were distant cousins and we know each other by name. That is all. I have no idea what story he told you. I have no idea whether he enjoys making up stories or whether the man is mad. I don’t know him at all. But whatever story he told you, if it involved me in any sense, is false.”

He came to his feet and moved to the front door of the apartment, obviously with the intent of opening it and politely asking his guests to leave, but Ruth remained where she was.

“Knud Christensen said his brother had drowned and he was diving for the body—”

“Madame, I’m sorry his brother drowned, if in fact he did and Christensen did not also invent that story, but I fail to see—”

“He said he was diving for his brother’s body last January, and—”

“He was diving in January?” Nordberg looked amused. “Where? In Capri?”

“Off the Gedser lighthouse—”

Nordberg’s amused look disappeared; he threw up his hands. “Please! This insanity must end! The waters off Gedser lighthouse would kill any man diving in them in January in minutes! I have no idea at all what your purpose was in coming here with this ridiculous story, madame, but I have had more than enough of it! You will please either leave or I shall have to call the police.” He swung the door open and waited.

Ruth stared at him, fuming. The fact that the man’s actions, even his final words, had duplicated Gregor’s predictions almost to the letter, did nothing to lessen her frustration. Gregor dropped his inspection of the inferior copies that decorated the apartment walls and walked over, standing over Ruth and looking down at her.

“I believe the professor is well within his rights, Ruth,” he said quietly. “I tried to tell you before that you had no proof of your charge, but you insisted upon coming here with me. Why don’t you go back to the hotel and wait for me? I won’t be long. I should like to speak to Professor Nordberg a few moments on the subject I came to discuss with him, before you insisted upon using my introduction to the professor to accompany me here and make your—well, rather impolitic accusation—”

Ruth opened her mouth to retort, and then remembered her promise. She held little hope for Gregor’s success, but she had given her word to let him try if she failed. Still, after Gregor had also failed, as she was sure he would, she fully intended to take the matter up with the authorities. She was sure that the Metropolitan could make some deal with the Danish government—especially with the influence of Count Lindgren—that would allow her to return to the Metropolitan with the treasure. The deal undoubtedly would cost more than the hundred thousand dollars that idiot, Nordberg, was refusing by pretending he didn’t know what she was talking about, but the deal undoubtedly would also be far less than the fifteen million dollars the idiot, Nordberg, still thought he could realize from his auction. She came to her feet.

“Don’t do anything foolish, darling,” she said under her breath, and walked through the door Nordberg was holding open without a glance at him. They could hear her footsteps on the stairs and a few moments later the sound of the outer door of the building being slammed, as if in anger.

Nordberg closed the apartment door. It was with an effort that he refrained from wiping his brow in relief at having at least avoided any damaging statements. He turned to Kovpak, keeping his look of bewilderment, thinking that Count Lindgren would have been proud of his acting ability, at how well he had handled the difficult situation.

“I can’t imagine where the woman ever got such an odd idea—”

“Oh, I can,” Gregor said cheerfully.

“What?” This time Nordberg’s bewilderment was quite genuine.

“I said, I can,” Kovpak said and took the professor lightly by the arm. “Why don’t you sit down, Professor, and let me explain this entire affair to you? I think I can make you understand.”

He almost lowered a startled Nordberg to the sofa Ruth had so recently abandoned, and then took a chair and pulled it close to the paunchy and puzzled man. Gregor sat down and considered the professor benignly.

“You see, Professor,” he said in a friendly tone which invited the other man to try and understand his point of view, “my disagreement with Dr. McVeigh was not on her facts, nor her conclusions, but on her methods. If I gave you any other impression, I’m sorry.” Nordberg was staring at him half-hypnotized. He was just beginning to realize he had avoided the pendulum only to face the pit. He made a move to rise.

“You came here under false pretenses. I’ll call the police—”

Gregor pushed him down, but did it very gently. “Please, Professor. I’m speaking and it’s not polite to interrupt. When I am finished you can call the police if you still wish to, but in the meantime please do me the kindness of sitting quietly and listening to me, and you needn’t waste time with me trying to think up denials, because quite sincerely I hope for your sake you really do have the treasure.”

“For—for my sake?”

“Exactly.” Gregor beamed at him, as a teacher might smile proudly at a pupil who exhibited quickness in seeing an answer. “You see, I know you have the treasure. I am quite sure, however, that you would never release it on the mere threat of prosecution by the authorities. Why should you? The proof that you have it is tenuous in the extreme, and the treasure is undoubtedly very well hidden, so that discovery of it must certainly be difficult, if not impossible. And Knud Christensen’s story would never be enough, coming from a man shattered by the death of his remaining family, to convince the most sanguine jury. No, I am sure that Dr. McVeigh’s threats did not bother you greatly. However”—Gregor’s smiling face and suddenly raised finger asked the professor to pay even closer attention at this moment—“I believe that under modern and tested methods of interrogation, you would be more than willing to co-operate and tell us exactly where you have this treasure hidden.”

Nordberg’s lips were white. “But I tell you, I don’t have—”

“You don’t have the treasure?” Gregor’s smile disappeared. He looked sad. “That would be a pity. You see, Professor, that’s what I meant before when I said I hoped you had the treasure for your sake, because how can you confess you have it and tell us where it is if you really don’t have it? You will suffer—that is, undergo the interrogation—for nothing, until it is too late, I’m afraid. And we will have wasted our time, although that, of course, would be no concern of yours.”

Nordberg was staring. Sweat was pouring from him. “Are you—are you really Dr. Gregor Kovpak?”

“I am. Would you care to see my Hermitage pass?” Gregor drew out his wallet and offered it to Nordberg, opened at the proper place. “It isn’t a very good picture, but I suppose I’m not the best subject.” He tucked the wallet back into his pocket. “The cut on my cheek, of course, doesn’t help.”

“You—you are a noted scientist and you’re threatening to—to torture me?”

“The word I used was interrogate,” Kovpak said chidingly. “And I certainly wouldn’t conduct the interrogation. I’m a scientist, as you say. I would probably botch the whole thing due to my lack of experience, and lose you before—” He seemed to notice that his words were disturbing the professor and he continued a bit apologetically, as if necessary for the professor’s complete understanding. “There is in Copenhagen at this moment a man from one of our Russian organizations known as the KGB. You’ve heard of it? Then you know. He is trained in this sort of thing. I am not. He could probably make you last for days. I’d be lucky if you didn’t die on me in a matter of hours.” He shrugged humorously at this admission of his own incompetence, and then suddenly changed his entire attitude; his very appearance seemed to change. “This man will do what I tell him, and I will tell him you know where the Schliemann treasure is, and that I want to know. He will get that information from you. I may or may not watch him work. I understand his methods are quite unsavory, and while I do not have a weak stomach, there are limits to everything.”

He came to his feet, towering over the shaken professor.

“I will give you until noon today to decide if it is really necessary to go to such extreme limits. I know someone who wants that treasure, and that person is going to get it. You certainly will not stand in the way. I am at the Plaza Hotel. I shall expect to hear from you by noon. If not, you will be in the hands of the KGB by twelve-thirty, and calling the police will not help you. There is no escape, Professor. There is no escape!”

He walked to the door, turned to give the professor one last cold look, and left, closing the door firmly behind him. That done he hurried down the steps. At the front door of the building he paused to wedge the latch to save time in case he later had to leave and return, and then went down to the basement.

In the apartment he had left a very shaken Arne Nordberg. The professor suddenly shivered. This one was the very devil! Those black unblinking eyes, that black hair, twisted almost like horns! That bandage, obviously hiding a sinister scar! There was no doubt the man meant every word of his threat.

Even if he told them that the treasure was at Lindgren Castle, they would never believe him, especially if the count should deny it. And why should the count not deny it? What did a man in the position of Count Lindgren have to gain by allowing himself to get involved in affairs as sinister as these? It was one thing to expect the count to handle the auction of the treasure merely as an entertainment. It was quite another to expect the count to jeopardize his position even if the alternative was the life of a mere professor of history. And if the count denied the story, as he was bound to, then nobody would believe him, and he would die.

Far better that he accept the hundred thousand dollars and give up the treasure. Certainly the count would not object to that. After all, he was just in it for sport. If he, Nordberg, wanted to give up a fortune to save his own life, certainly his good friend Count Axel Lindgren would only applaud the decision.

Still, the thought of taking a mere hundred thousand dollars when he had had his appetite whetted with thoughts of at least fifteen million, was galling. It was worse than galling, it was sickening! Certainly there had to be some means of avoiding the threatened torture, and to stay with the auction Count Lindgren had planned. There had to be! Only he could not think of it … The thing to do, he suddenly realized, was the same thing he had been clever enough to do when the question of disposing of the treasure first presented itself—ask the advice of Count Lindgren. The count might well come up with an answer where he, himself, could not.

The decision to telephone the count and tell him everything brought a certain calmness to Nordberg. He came to his feet and walked a bit unsteadily to the telephone, raised the receiver, and dialed the familiar number. But before the telephone at the other end had a chance to ring more than twice there was a heavy knock on the apartment door. Nordberg frowned blackly. Who could that be? A neighbor? But Nordberg’s neighbors never bothered him. That devil Kovpak, back so soon with further demands? But what further demands could he possibly make? The heavy knock on the door was repeated. With a muttered curse for making him postpone his call, Nordberg put the receiver back on the hook and walked over to open the door.

In the basement of the apartment Kovpak stood and watched as Ulanov and another man listened patiently to their headsets. Suddenly Ulanov looked up. He winked at Gregor. “He’s dialing …” He closed his eyes as if to listen better and then opened them to scribble some numbers on a pad. He showed them to the large blond man who read them and nodded. Ulanov put his attention back to his headset and then looked up, frowning. “He hung up without waiting for his call to be answered.”

“Maybe he decided to go to the man instead of calling him,” Kovpak said. “I’d better get out to my car.” A thought came; he smiled sheepishly. “I don’t even know what he’s driving.”

“Fortunately, we thought it might be well to know,” Ulanov said dryly. “He’s driving a yellow Volvo, at least ten years old. It’s parked a block down the street, pointing north. You can’t miss it. The door on the driver’s side, the street side, is caved in and the whole thing looks as if it’s being held together with spit.” He held up his hand before Kovpak could sprint for the steps. “But there’s no need to rush. I have a man outside who’ll advise us when your professor leaves the apartment. And the professor’ll have a little trouble starting his car.” He grinned. “Not too much, just enough to hold him up until we can pick him up. A loose electrical connection even he can’t miss if he has enough brains to take a look at the motor.” He returned to listening to the telephone. “Maybe he had to go to the bathroom …”

The minutes passed with Ulanov wishing he could smoke but knowing that the odor could testify to the presence of men in the basement, and with Kovpak getting more and more restless. Suddenly Kovpak looked up with a frown. “Major, did you get the number he dialed?”

“Of course.” Ulanov pointed to the pad.

“How long would it take to find an address for that number? Or a name?”

Ulanov looked inquiringly at the large blond man with him. The man considered the question a moment and then shrugged. “Maybe half an hour.” He put aside his headset without being told, reading his orders from Ulanov’s nod, and left the basement.

The two men remaining there continued their vigil. Kovpak found a couple of empty crates and dragged them over; Ulanov nodded his thanks and sat down. Kovpak slipped on the headset abandoned by the blond man. The silence continued. After fifteen more minutes Ulanov looked over at Kovpak.

“You couldn’t have put much of a scare into the man,” he said mildly. “Maybe I’d better go up and finish the job.”

“I put enough of a scare into him,” Kovpak said with a touch of irritation. “I have no idea why he isn’t calling someone! Or isn’t rushing to that someone right now! I don’t like this …”

“Well, we’ll have an address and a name in a few more minutes,” Ulanov said commiseratingly.

“If you got the number right.”

“If you had done your simple job as well as I do my more complicated ones,” Ulanov said evenly, “we wouldn’t be sitting here like a couple of dolts waiting for a telephone call it seems he isn’t going to make.”

“Maybe he left by the back way …”

“Maybe he went up in a balloon from the roof,” Ulanov said in an unkind tone. “Or is tunneling from the third floor to the third floor of a building in the next street. Do you think you’re the only person who ever heard of a back door to an apartment building? Or of having it watched?”

Gregor bit back a retort. Arguing with Ulanov wasn’t going to help. And while he had been positive that Professor Nordberg had been frightened half out of his skin, the fact was that Nordberg was neither leaving nor telephoning. He was probably having a belated breakfast and laughing to himself at the puerile attempts to frighten him. Or possibly he was entertaining a woman visitor who had arrived in the past half hour. The way he looked at Ruth when she was coming up the stairs indicated he was a man who might even put a willing woman ahead of the treasure—although that seemed most unlikely. Kovpak checked his watch and muttered a curse under his breath. Where the devil was that blond genius of an assistant of Ulanov who could trace a telephone number to a name in half an hour? More than that had already passed. He probably could have done as well by simply running his finger down the list of all telephone subscribers in the country in that length of time. He checked his watch once again and made a decision. He put his headset aside, coming to his feet.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he said quietly. “I’m going upstairs and ask our sleazy friend just why he isn’t doing what he should be doing.” His voice toughened. “He’ll tell me, too, or else—”

Ulanov shrugged. “Or else he won’t. You’re talking about a lot of money, my friend. It induces silence more than physical threats.” The stocky major watched his companion climb the basement steps and disappear through the door leading to the lobby. Gregor Kovpak, he decided with a sigh, did not have the proper temperament to be a successful intelligence agent. He lacked the patience for it. Although one would think that an archaeologist, working years and years on some excavation just to emerge triumphant with a few shards of pottery, or a few dessicated bones, would have the patience of Job. But it was a different type of patience, Ulanov decided, and recalled when he was a young agent and was assigned to continuously stare from a window at a blank wall, simply waiting for a certain person to place a poster on it. Nobody ever did, and all he got from Vashugin when he reported had been a grunt. Still, possibly a grunt was all that particular vigil had been worth.

The minutes passed with Ulanov missing tobacco; the silence at the other end of the tapped line was beginning to make him sleepy. Then his head jerked up, alert. There had been a sound at the head of the basement steps and Ulanov assumed the attitude of a faithful member of the Danish Telephone Service, only to look and see Kovpak returning. The major looked at him inquiringly. “Well?”

“He didn’t answer the door.”

Major Kovpak looked at him curiously. “It took you that long to discover he didn’t answer the door?”

“I went up and rapped on the door; nobody answered. I thought he might be in an inner room where he couldn’t hear me knock, so I went down to the street and rang his doorbell. He never answered. So then I went back upstairs and rapped on the door again—”

“And nobody answered. I heard you.” The major considered his younger friend carefully. “Or else he didn’t tell you what you wanted to know despite your ‘or else’…”

Kovpak’s face flushed. “I said he didn’t answer the door!”

“If you say so, I believe you. Maybe he thought you were selling magazine subscriptions …”

There was a shadow on the steps and the blond man appeared, panting a bit and looking apologetic for the delay.

“It took longer than I thought,” he said, “but here it is. The call was made to a place called Lindgren Castle. A Count Axel Lindgren lives there. It’s in Ringsted. Of course, the call may have been to someone else in the household,” he added, “but that is the address the call was placed to.”

“Lindgren!” Gregor stared but only for a moment, then his jaw hardened. “That accident was no accident! That murdering bastard!” He stared at Ulanov, not seeing him, speaking aloud but to himself. “It makes sense when you think about it. He’s important enough to have the necessary contacts throughout the world. He had the money needed to finance the operation, and he has the charm”—he smiled grimly at the use of the word—“the charm! to get a little nobody like Nordberg to hand the treasure over to him. I’m surprised Nordberg stayed alive as long as he did …”

Ulanov had been listening to this stream of consciousness politely. Now he felt he ought to speed things up. “I don’t know who this Count Lindgren is, other than the fact that you don’t seem to like him,” he said, “but if you believe he’s the one with the treasure, shouldn’t we be on our way to visit him?”

“We certainly should. Let’s go!”

Ulanov slipped off his headset and started to hand it to the blond man. Then he looked at Gregor, his face inscrutable. “Is there any purpose in continuing to monitor his telephone?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I didn’t think you did,” Ulanov said enigmatically, and gave instructions to the blond man. “Pack up and go home. You can leave Boris in front in case anyone comes and rings the professor’s bell. Nikolai can go back with you. Reports go to the office.” Ulanov turned to Gregor. “Let’s go.”

They climbed the steps, Gregor seething at the thought of Count Lindgren and how close he had come, through his man Wilten, in killing both himself and Ruth. He removed the wedge in the latch and unconsciously glanced up the stairway, almost as if he could see the third-floor apartment. Then without a word he walked quickly out to the car. Ulanov started to say something and then thought better of it. Instead he climbed into the car and lit a cigarette, inhaling blissfully, while studying the other’s expressionless profile. Gregor paid him no mind, studying a map of the small country’s highways a moment, and then putting the car into motion. “We’ll check for Lindgren Castle when we get near Ringsted,” he said evenly. The white-haired major merely nodded.

They passed the ten-year-old yellow Volvo down the street and turned into the Farimagsgade, beginning to work their way south through the city toward the Vestergade and the road west into the open country. Behind them James Newkirk was pleased to see them moving at last. He had sat in his car in the hot morning sun for over an hour, and the breeze brought on as he drove was very welcome. At this point in the chase, Newkirk did not particularly care if the car ahead knew he was following them. He had no idea of what Kovpak and Ulanov had been doing in that apartment building, but there was no doubt something was up and James Newkirk meant to know what that something was. He had picked Ulanov up at the Russian Embassy in the Bredgade early that morning, knowing he would stay there. He had seen him depart with three other men in some sort of a utility truck, and had followed them to this location. Here he had observed Ruth McVeigh and Gregor Kovpak arrive and watched Ruth McVeigh depart alone, leaving the Russians inside. With all the characters of the drama assembled, there was no doubt things were coming to a conclusion, and Newkirk was not to be put off from being in on it.

Kovpak crossed the Pile Allee and entered the Roskildeveg, heading toward Roskilde and the turnoff to Ringsted, when he glanced in the rearview mirror for the fourth or fifth time. He spoke to Ulanov without turning his head.

“We’re being followed!”

“Oh?” Ulanov turned to look over his shoulder and then turned back, spewing smoke from his cigarette. “That’s just Newkirk.” He bit back a yawn. He had slept poorly the night before; he was getting too old for strange beds. And he had had to get up early to place the bug on the professor’s phone. Maybe he ought to ask for retirement—and then he thought that if he had any trouble on this case, any further trouble that is, he might not have to ask for retirement. It was a sad thought.

“Newkirk?” Gregor asked, mystified by the strange name.

“That CIA agent I told you about in London. Don’t pay any attention to him.”

Kovpak swung around, staring at Ulanov in disbelief. “You mean he’s been following us since London?”

“No, no!” The major shook his head, dislodging ash which sprinkled his jacket. “I’ve been following you. He’s been following me. Then in Germany I lost you but found him. Then when I wanted to find you I let him do it for me. Then I followed him.” He shrugged. “Now he’s following both of us. It isn’t important.”

Kovpak drew a deep breath and shook his head. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“No,” Ulanov said in a tired tone, agreeing. “It doesn’t.” He flipped his cigarette through the car window and leaned back, closing his eyes. “Try not to use the horn too much. I’m going to take a nap before we get there …”